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MEMOIRS
OF THE
LIFE AND ADMINISTRATION
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURGHLEY,
SECRETARY OF STATE IN THE REIGN OF KING EDWARD VI. AND
LORD HIGH TREASURER OF ENGLAND IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
CONTAINING AN
HISTORICAL VIEW
OF
THE TIMES IN WHICH HE LIVED,
AND OF THE MANY EMINENT AND ILLUSTRIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM HE WAS CONNECTED;
WITH EXTRACTS FROM HIS PRIVAtE AND OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE,
AND OTHER PAPERS,
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM THE ORIGINALS.
BY THE
REV. EDWARD NARES, D.D.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
COLBURN AND BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
MDCCCXXX.
DP
3
5?
V,
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
WILLIAM ALLEYNE CECIL,
LORD BURGHLE Y,
(ELDEST SON OF THE MOST NOBLE
BROWNLOW, MARQUESS OF EXETER, K.G.)
HEIR OF BURGHLEY,
t
AND THE IMMEDIATE AND DIRECT DESCENDANT
OF THE
VERY CELEBRATED STATESMAN WHOSE LIFE IS HEREIN RECORDED:
€f)t0 *rcouti > oluntf of a CZHovtt
DESIGNED TO COMMEMORATE WITHOUT FAVOUR OR FLATTERY
"THE WISE COUNSELS,
INTENSE LABOURS, UNSHAKEN LOYALTY,
tt
AND
FAITHFUL SERVICES OF HIS GREAT AND RENOWNED ANCESTOR,
is
VERY RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
June-2S, 1830.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. I.
Page
Accession of Elizabeth— Cecil's competency to advise the Queen— Her title to the Crown-
Henry's Will— Description of the Queen's person— Cecil the first to announce to her
Mary's demise, and her own accession— The Queen's first Council— Cecil Secretary—
The Queen removes to London— Funerals of Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole— Bad state
of England on Elizabeth's accession, from various Authors— Her Coronation— The Lord
Keeper's Speech to Parliament— Assumption of the English Crown by Francis and Mary
—Claims of the French in favour of Mary— Parliament meets— Courage of Elizabeth's
Ministers— Philip II.'s proposal of Marriage— Device for Religion— The Queen on the
Eucharist— Public Disputations— Cecil Chancellor of Cambridge— Peace of Chateau
Cambrensis— Death of Henry II. of France— Danger to England from Scotland-
Dangers from France— Revival of King Edward's Prayer Book— High Commission Court
— Parker made Archbishop— Differences in Religion— Jewel's' Letters on the State of
England— Amendment of the Coin— Summary of wise counsels • • ' 1
CHAP. II.
Duke of Norfolk and Lord Grey sent to the North— Knox's Character— Alteration in the
conduct and disposition of the Queen Regent of Scotland— Mary Queen of Scots' family
the occasion of her troubles— Important Papers drawn up by Cecil on the aspect of
affairs, particularly in regard to Scotland, with the conclusions drawn from them— Peace
of Cambray, a fallacious peace— Maxims of defence— Lords of Congregation, their views—
Lethington's famous Letter— Proceedings with Scotland, from Lord B.'s Notes— Lords
of Congregation's Address to the Regent, with her reply- the Conquest of Scotland
aimed at by France— Application of Protestants to Elizabeth— Elizabeth in danger of
being beguiled— Account of Knox— Earl of Arran— Practices against England— Address
to the Queen Regent from the Camp of the Confederates— Military operations in Scot-
land—Du Glasion, Spanish Minister, and Cecil's Answer to him in Latin— Duplicity
of the French— Cook's Account of the English Ministers— Account of Monluc— Eliza-
beth's Proclamation against the Guises— Guises' notice of it— Spanish Interposition—
vi CONTENTS.
Page
Papers by Knollys and Du Glasion — Intimation to Du Glasion of the Queen's Proceedings
— Letters to Lady Cecil — Cecil sets off for Scotland — The Guises occupied with the
conspiracy of Amboise— Letters from Cecil and Wotton — Progress of the Negotiation —
Treaty of Edinburgh signed and proclaimed — Return of Cecil — Affairs of the Church —
Lent season still observed — Archbishop Parker's order for serving the Cures — Cecil's
Article 84
CHAP. III.
Death of Francis II. King of France— Perplexities of Elizabeth's title and competition with
Mary of Scotland — Lord Burghley accused of deliberate enmity to Mary — His letter to
Lord Shrewsbury — Elizabeth's title denied in France — Mary's principles and connexions
alarming to the Protestants— Her intention to return to Scotland— Randolph sent to
Scotland — Reflections and remarks on his Instructions — Missions of Murray and Leslie
to France — Mary's passport refused — Scheme in France to detain Murray — Murray
reported to have designs on the Crown — Throckmorton's account of Randon — Why
Arran thought of by England — Possible causes for Mary's interception, if true — Her
arrival in Scotland— Advantages over Elizabeth— Employs the Protestants on her return
— Intercourse with Elizabeth— Desires to be acknowledged heir to Elizabeth— Refuses
to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh — Cheney, a worthy but odd man, assisted by Cecil —
The Queen visits the Secretary— The walking at Paul's stayed by Proclamation— Cecil
made Master of the Court of Wards 187
CHAP. IV.
Correspondence between the two Queens on the Treaty of Edinburgh— Dangers from the
Guises— Knox and Conseus on the tyranny of the Guises— Necessity of examining into
the conduct of the Catholics— Projected interview of the two Queens— Elizabeth ill-
Mary of Scots anxious to have her title asserted— Cecil's letter to resign the Chancellor-
ship of Cambridge— Situation of France at the accession of Charles IX. — Massacre of
Vassi— Elizabeth assists the Hugonots— Confusion of parties— Throckmorton, Smith,
Leicester, &c.— Shan O'Neale— Jewel's Apology— Death of Peter Martyr .... 246
CHAP. V.
Parliamentary proceedings— The Speaker Williams' address to the Queen— Subsidy, and
proceedings relative to the succession— Reflections on the Queen's marriage and suc-
cession—Nowell's catechism— Second Book of Homilies— Disputes in Convocation-
Queen Elizabeth studies the Fathers— Conspiracy of the Poles— Surrender of Newhaven
—Conclusion of the Council of Trent— Jewel's answer to Scipio— Osorius's letter to the
Queen, and Haddon's answer— Haddon employed by Cecil— His death— Mary Queen of
Scots writes to the council of Trent— Elizabeth's message to the Queen of Scots . . .282
CONTETNS.
CHAP. VI.
Ills arising from Royal Marriages— Different Matrimonial Projects, for Mary— Elizabeth
proposes Leicester to her— Melvil sent on Matrimonial Embassies— Pictures— Duke
Casimir— Archduke Charles— Conduct of Mary and Elizabeth with regard to Leicester-
Return of Lennox to Scotland— Melvil's Account of Elizabeth and Dudley— Ceremony
of his being made Earl of Leicester— Characters of Lord Burghley, Elizabeth, Mary,
Darnley, Leicester, Archduke Charles, by Miss Aikin— Lord Burghley's Letter to Mund't
-His Notes of the Proceedings of Scotland— Of Mary's Marriage with Darnley-Lord
and Lady Lennox— Lord Darnley- Mr. Tamworth— Sir Francis Englefield's Letters-
Duchess of Parma— Netherlands— Killegrew— Lines by Lady Killegrew- Lord Burghley's
eldest Son married— Sir Thomas Chaloner's Death -Of Lord Burghley's concise Notes-
Account of the Queen's visit to Cambridge— Her first visit to Kenilworth— Mayor of
Coventry— Letter of John Fox— Hales' Book on the Succession— Lord Hertford and
Lady Catherine Grey— Lord John Grey— Hales— Letters from Lady Catherine—
Dennum's Letter —Puritans — Cartwright— Sampson and Humphrey — Bullinger—
St. John's College, Cambridge— Lord Burghley appealed to in all Cases— Dispute
between the Bishop of Winchester and Feckenham— Dominicus Sampsonius' Letter-
Books sent to England by the Papists in Flanders-Protest of the People of Antwerp
against the Court of Inquisition— Caryl— Letters to Lord Burghley— Dr. Goodman's
Application— Strype on the Interview between Mary and Elizabeth ...... 3]2
CHAP. VII.
Pope Pius V. chosen-Order of St. Michael sent to England-David Rizzio and Darnley
-Murray — Randolph -Hazardous state of England — Character of the -Scots -The
Lennoxes— Randolph's letter— Marriage of Mary and Darnley— Protestant party low in
Scotland— Copy of the Catholic league sent to Mary— Darnley and Mary on bad terms
-Murder of Rizzio— Conoius upon it— Bothwell in favour— Birth of James— Melvil's
mission to England— Elizabeth receives the news from Cecil— Account of Ruxby, Cecil's
Spy— Cecil's letter to him— Ruxby's letter to Cecil-Rapin's correct account of things-
Baptism of James VI.— Earl of Bedford sent by Elizabeth— Mary a dangerous rival at
all times to Elizabeth— Bothwell in great favour— Darnley goes to Glasgow-Js sullen
and not to be appeased— State of the Low Countries— Cardinal Granvelle very unpopular
— Brabanters alarmed — The Queen visits Oxford — Parliament assembled — Proceed-
ings about the succession— Parliament dissolved— Bull of Pope Pius V —Account of
Saravia 363
CONTENTS,
vin
CHAP. VIII.
Page
Darnley's illness-Of Mary and Both well -Darnley's murder -Passage from Bishop
Grindal's letter to Bullinger-Melvil's account of Mary, Darnley, and Bothwell-
£;; .conduct towards Z^-BotbweH'a trial-Beton's letter to Mary-Mary earned
to Bothwell's castle-Bothwell divorced-Mary marnes hun-BoJwdl tnes to get
possession of the young Prince-Mary surrenders herself-Bothwell s •£*-""*
morton sent by Elizabeth-Mary's resignation-James crowned-Murray I
of Bothwell-Overtures of marriage with the Archduke-Lord Sussex sent-S.r H
Sydney Lord Deputy of Ireland-Calais-Shan O'Niel-Confederacy of the Popu
States-Articles of it-Incessant applications to Cecil-Attack on the Clergy-
Nowell-Dorman-Bishop Jewel-Attempt in Lancashire to restore Popery-B.shop of
Carlisle-Faithful Cummin-Death of Dr. Nicholas Wotton-Queen's Progresses
CHAP. IX.
Various opinions as to what should be done with Mary-Knox-Different religious parties
-Mary's escape from Lochleven-Conflict on Langside Hill-Mary flies to Dundrenan
Abbey-Goes to Carlisle-Story of the ring-Of the difficult part Elizabeth had to act
with regard to Mary-Of Mary's character-Difficulty of deciding what was best to be
done with her- Elizabeth's conduct rashly judged by different authors-Lady Jane Grey ,
-Comparison between Elizabeth and her sister Mary-Anne Boleyn-Sonnets, &c.
produced at York-Murray's charges against Mary-Mary's letter to Elizabeth-Deter-
mination of Elizabeth and her Ministers to keep Mary in England— Sir Henry Norm's
letter to Cecil-Letter from Mary to Elizabeth, from Bolton-Extract from the instruc-
tions of the Prince of Conde-Of Elizabeth and her Ministers, with regard to Mary-
Of Elizabeth and Mary-Sir Ralph Sadler's speech-Of Elizabeth and her Counsellors,
especially Lord Burghley-Commissioners meet at York-Queries sent to the Duke of
Norfolk — Of the claim of England to a feudal superiority over Scotland — Queries
favourable to Mary, suggested by the Council at Hampton Court-Sir Francis Knollys'
letter to Elizabeth— Of Mary's situation— Letter from Lord Scrope and Sir F. Knollys
concerning her— Of the Papists, in Lancashire especially-See of York vacant— Letter
addressed by the Queen's order to Cecil, as Chancellor of Cambridge-Dr. Perne's Letter
—Queen's illness— Sir John Mason's prayer— Of Mary's case— The Protestants of foreign
countries seek the protection of Elizabeth-Many allowed to settle in England— The
Pope's bull— Answered by Bishop Jewel —Affairs of the Netherlands -Count of Egmont
—Anabaptists— Bishop Grindal— Cecil's Fast— Outrages committed by the Spaniards on
the English Merchants' fleet— Paper presented to the Spanish Ambassador— On Fasting
and Fish-days— Letter from Cecil to the University of Cambridge on Fasting— Queen's
446
Progresses
CONTENTS.
CHAP. X.
Extract from Lord Burghley's Life, by a Domestic, containing the account of a Conspiracy *
against him, when Master of the Wards-Rapin's account of the same Conspiracy-
Camden-Of the Queen's conduct in it-Extract from Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker
relating to Cec.l-Names of persons concerned in the Conspiracy- Of Lord Pembroke-
Letters from the Earl of Sussex to Cecil-Of Leicester-Prayer in favour of the Queen's
Marnage w.th the Archduke, attributed to Cecil-Of Cecil's views with regard to the
Extract from Hallam, on the Conspiracy-Passage from Lord Burghley's
Life, by a Domestic, with the account of a Papist's attempt to assassinate him-Rebellion
in the North-Outrages on the Churches, &c.-The Priest Morton-Sir Thomas Smith's
Pamphlet-Book attributed to Cecil by Strype-Illness of Cecil; his letters to Sir R
Sadler-Young Earl of Rutland-Duke of Norfolk-Memorial by Cecil, under the title of
Penis and Remedies-Knox's letter to Wood-Passage from Rapin concerning Mary-
Memorable Speech of Elizabeth, reported by Bishop Jewel-Montanus' History of the
Span.sh Inquisition published-Rodolphus Cavallerius-Theodore Wierus' letter to Ce.eil
Cecil's letter to Signor Bertano-Killegrew's letters to Cecil-Elizabeth excommu-
•Duke of Alva-Mary's charges against Elizabeth and Cecil -Extract from
Strype concerning Mary-Her letter to Elizabeth from Tutbury Castle-Sir Walter
M.ldmay's opinion, in Burnet-Mr. White's account of Mary at Bolton-Lord Hunsdon's
stter-Lord Shrewsbury's account of Mary's expenses-Letter from Cecil to Lord
Shrewsbury-Letter from Lord Leicester to the Earl of Sussex-Sir N. Throckmorton's
Conversion with the Earl of Lennox-Henry Carey sent to the Regent of Scotland with
inquiries-Letter from Lords Huntingdon and Hereford to Cecil-Bishop of Ross-
Admiral Coligni-Puritans-Christopher Foster's letter-Dr. Whitgift-Disturbances at
Cambridge-Cecil appealed to in all cases-Death of Bishop Boner-Dr. Story-Douay
College founded-Colleges at Rome-Persons-First Public Lottery 489
*
CHAP. XI.
A year of extreme danger- Strype's abstract, with remarks upon it-Bullinger on the
Pope's Bull-Bacon, Cecil, Mildmay and Sadler denounced as Evil Counsellors-
Norfolk Rebellion— Wylson's Translation of Demosthenes dedicated to Lord Burghley-
Cartwnght excites disturbances-Opposition of the Puritans unreasonable-Lord Burghley
as Chancellor of Cambridge much annoyed by them-Projectof Marriage between Eliza-
Bth and the Due d'Anjou, afterwards Henry III.-AstroIogical calculations upon it-
Death of the Regent Murray -Mission of Sir William Cecil and Sir Walter Mildmay to
Mary Queen of Scots, at Chatsworth-Sir William Cecil made Lord Burghley-Bishop
of Ross congratulates him-Cecil's own account of his new honours-Death of Throck-
morton— Grindal, Archbishop of York ....
" * * • O18
VOL. II.
x CONTENTS.
CHAP. XII.
Page
Dates puzzling — Marriage of the Queen revived — Walsingham sent — His instructions —
Leicester and Btirghley specially appointed to treat with the French minister — Sir Thomas
Smith sent to Paris — Duplicity of both Courts — Scotch Commissioners — Leicester's
account to Walsingham of the conference — Walsingham's answer — Of the part Cecil had
to act in Mary's case— Due d'Anjou — Ridolpho— Duke of Norfolk — Rapin's account of
their plots — Intrigues against Elizabeth carried on by Mary with Spain and France —
Bishop of Ross committed to custody — Lord Burghley's letter to Lord Shrewsbury —
Spanish minister sent out of England — Design of the Spanish faction against the Queen's
and Lord Burghley's life — Parliament meets — Debate on the succession — Bill passed
making certain offences treasonable— Sir Thomas Smith — Death of Bishop Jewel— His
Apology — Sir Francis Knollys — The Lord Keeper's Speech on the opening of Parliament
— Of the great share Lord Burghley had in the good government of the kingdom — Affairs
of the Church — Strype — Protestations — Leicester — Code of ecclesiastical and civil laws
— Battle of Lepanto — Archbishop Parker— Lord Burghley's daughter married to Lord
Oxford — Miss Aikin's character of Lord Oxford — Queen's Progresses — Theobalds • • 548
CHAP. XIII.
Treaty of peace with France — Intrigues against Elizabeth — Indictment and trial of the Duke
of Norfolk— Execution of Mather and Berny for a Conspiracy against Lord Burghley —
The Spanish faction much annoyed by the discovery — Death of the Marquis of Winchester,
and Lord Burghley made Treasurer — Proceedings in Parliament against the Queen of
Scots — Puritans busy — Seaton's Embassy — The Queen pressed by her Parliament to bring
Mary to Trial — Letter of Lord Burghley to Sir F. Walsingham — Duke of Norfolk executed
— League with France — Duke of Montmorencv comes over — Cecil Knight of the Garter
— Extract from Lord Burghley's Life, by a Domestic — Massacre of St. Bartholomew —
Letters from Lord Burghley to Sir F. Walsingham on the Massacre ; from Lord
Leicester; and from Sir T. Smith — French Ambassador — Resentment manifested in
England on account of the Massacre — Proposal of Catherine de Medicis to meet Elizabeth
—Mason Fleur, the French Ambassador— Elizabeth requested to stand Godmother to the
daughter of Charles IX. — Death of John Knox — Summary of Scotch affairs — Secret
instructions to Killegrew on his being sent to Scotland — Lord Burghley's letters from
Woodstock — Defence of Mary's honour — Comparison of Leslie and Buchanan — Disgrace
of Mary — Detectio Mariee — Intrigues of the Papists — Disciplinarians — Admonition to
Parliament— Dering's Address — Archbishop Parker's Bible — Bishop Parkhurst —
Extract from Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker— Queen's Progresses 578
MEMOIRS
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM CECIL,
LORD BURGHLEY.
CHAP. I.
First year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, from Nov. 17, 1558, to Nov. 16, 1559; first parliament
met Jan. 25th, 1558-9, dissolved May 8th, 1559.
Anno Ferdinand! Imp. 4mo. — H. 2di R.Gail. 12mo. Mar. Reg. Scot. 16to. [From Lord Burgkley's
own Notes of Queen Elizabeth's Reign.]
Accession of Elizabeth — Cecil's competency to advise the Queen — Her title to the Crown —
Henry's Will — Description of the Queen's person — Cecil thejirst to announce to her Mary's
demise, and her own accession — The Queen's first Council — Cecil Secretary — The Queen
removes to London — Funerals of Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole — Bad state of England
on Elizabeth's accession, from various Authors — Her Coronation — The Lord Keeper's
Speech to Parliament — Assumption of the English Crown by Francis and Mary — Claims
of the French in favour of Mary — Parliament meets — Courage of Elizabeth's Ministers —
Philip 1 1. 's proposal of Marriage — Device for Religion — The Queen on the Eucharist —
Public Disputations — Cecil Chancellor of Cambridge — Peace of Chateau Cambrensis —
Death of Henry II. of France — Danger to England from Scotland — Dangers from
France — Revival of King Edward's Prayer Book — High Commission Court — Parker
made Archbishop— Differences in Religion — Jewel's Letters on the State of England —
Amendment of the Coin — Summary of wise counsels.
are now arrived at the period, when, in the estimation of the generality
of the world, the Political Life of the Great Man whose History we are writing,
has been judged most properly to begin. On the accession to the throne of
2 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1658.
that most extraordinary Sovereign and Mistress, * whom, for the long space of
Forty Years, and to the very termination of his natural life, he served with a
constancy and fidelity impossible to be exceeded, and with such an unwearied
attention to the preservation of her crown and her life, against a combination of
foes, and with so rooted a regard to the glory, credit, and advancement of the
kingdom she had to rule, as may be reasonably said to have laid the foundation
of all that wealth and greatness, which have conspired to place it, for so long
a course of time, in the first rank of the nations of the world.
Before we enter, however, into the transactions of this very extraordinary reign,
we must, in justice to ourselves, submit to the reader the following remarks.
Had the Political Life of Lord Burghley begun, as many have appeared to
think, with the accession of Elizabeth, we might be led to entertain very erroneous
ideas of the extent of his wisdom, and the value of his services, at that very
important period — a period, in which an occasion was most providentially sup-
plied, by the demise of Mary, of revising all that had passed in the three preceding
Reigns, as connected with that great revolutionary struggle, then on foot, between
the Church of Rome, and the several reformed, or rather reforming Churches of
Christendom ; and which, as we have shewn in our first volume, had its beginning
as nearly as could be at the very period of the commencement of the natural life of
that eminent Statesman, and to which his attention happened to be powerfully
drawn, before he can be said to have passed the season of his youth ; having been
entered very earlyt a member of the University of Cambridge, and at the very
time, to use the words of a distinguished writer, J " when the last great revolution
of the intellectual world was filling every academical mind with ardour or
anxiety." It was there he fell into the company of persons, in a high degree
interested, if not immediately in the reformation of the Church, in the changes
that were taking place conducive thereto ; the emancipation of the human under-
standing from the trammels of a prescribed and mysterious course of study, and
the cultivation of such particular branches of knowledge, as had heretofore met
with no general encouragement, from a dread of the consequences to the usurped
authority of the Papacy.
Nor could it have been possible for any young man, at such a time, to have
fallen into a more select company than was the case with Lord Burghley, — there
* Who has been described as " more than a man, and, in truth, sometimes less than a woman ;"
an expression attributed by some to Lord Burghley himself, by others, to his son Lord Salisbury.
-h At 14 years of age. t Dr. Johnson's Life of Ascham.
1558.1 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 3
being scarcely one of his academical associates, who did not afterwards become
as conspicuous as himself, either in Church or State, and without any subsequent
interruption of the acquaintance so early formed, except by death, notwithstanding
the strange vicissitudes to which their native country became exposed.
When the sceptre passed into the hands of Elizabeth, no sovereign could be
said to stand more in need, not merely of talented, but of experienced Counsellors ;
and Lord Burghley's had been, to say the least, as to all such purposes, a con-
stant life of observation and experience ; — experience collected at the fountain
head, or derived through channels, the least devious that could be ; personally
known to her royal father, her brother, and her deceased sister, and to all those
who had been their most confidential advisers and ministers, and never far absent
from the very seat of government, who could be expected to know better than
himself, what course should be determined upon in the very commencement of
this new reign ? There was no time to hesitate; the eyes of Europe could not but
be directed from all parts towards England at this momentous crisis ; her
father, brother, and sister, had already drawn upon themselves general attention,
but to the excitement of very different feelings towards their country ; in the last
reign, those who had taken the most conspicuous parts with her father and
brother, in emancipating the nation from the usurped dominion of Rome,
had been generally removed ; many by death, many by banishment, and not
a few by martyrdom. Lord Burghley stood almost alone as the survivor of
the dead, and the representative of the absent; but in both cases the depositary
of their most secret thoughts and wishes ; he had witnessed the undoing,
under Mary, of all that they had done, under Henry and Edward, some with
the sacrifice of their lives, and others to the abandonment of their native
country ; and it seemed now in a great measure to rest with him to say,
whether they were once more to have justice done them, by restoring the
laws of Edward and Henry, which Mary had repealed, or to allow the Ro-
manists to perpetuate the triumph they had, as it were, accidentally attained.
No man could know better than himself, or more in detail, the history of
these laws, and the important changes wrought and established by them ;
which history was therefore made the subject of our first volume, that the
re-enactment of Edward's laws, and the re-establishment of the Protestant
Church of England by Elizabeth, might be the easier understood. We endea-
voured to impress it upon the reader's attention and memory at the beginning
of this Memoir ; — that the Life of Lord Burghley consisted principally of
6 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
it was therefore null ab initio, and that her father, upon the discovery of its perfect
illegality, had a just right, if not a conscientious plea, to separate himself from
her, without those tedious, tiresome, and disgusting formalities, to which Henry's
last remnant of respect for the court of Rome induced him for a long time to sub-
mit, in order to give it the appearance of a regular divorce. Elizabeth could be
under no necessity of believing the story of her mother's guilt, or of her precontract
with the Lord Percy, for they are not credited to this day, by any persons capable of
investigating that portion of the English history without prejudice; and as to her
subsequent illegitimation by Parliament at the will of Henry, she had certainly
no need to attend to that, if she discredited the allegations on which it was
founded. At the period of her birth, it is exceedingly notorious that her father
took every step he could take to mark his own sense of her legitimacy,* by the
magnificent circumstances attending her christening, t and his investing her with
the title of Princess of Wales, upon the alleged illegitimacy of her elder sister.
Her elevation to the throne upon the death of Mary, did not indeed depend,
as we shall soon shew, upon any of these questions, but simply on the will of
her father ; the legitimacy of her birth, nevertheless, was of the highest import-
ance as a bar against the pretensions of other living competitors, who might
reasonably be allowed to dispute the power of a will, to overrule claims more
decidedly hereditary, in favour of a notoriously spurious offspring. The course
of succession had hitherto been as follows ; First, Edward, as the undoubted
* Sanders indeed asserts, that Henry had declared in Parliament, that she was not and could
not be his daughter ; but see how he is answered by Burnet, Collection of Records, vol. ii. part
ii. Appendix, p. 80. Lingard insists that Anne Boleyn alluded to Henry's connexion with her
sister, rather than her precontract with Lord Percy, to favour the divorce. — See Henry VIII.
vol. vi. page 322. compare Turner, 623.
t For an account of this extraordinary ceremony, see Holinshed, Nichols's Progresses, and
Aikin's Court of Elizabeth. This last writer dwells largely on the melancholy ends to which
most of the exalted personages, who bore a part in this gorgeous and magnificent piece of pa-
geantry, were brought ; few of the company having failed afterwards to become the victims, either
of the jealousy and cruelty of their capricious Master, or of the struggles produced by the
Reformation of religion. The same writer notices a circumstance, which, according to the super-
titious credulity of the age, has been supposed to have been the influential cause of that extra-
ordinary sympathy, which gave such power and weight to the unworthy Leicester, in the Court of
this otherwise just discerner of men's talents. This "bold bad man," as he has been called, was
said to have been born on the same day and at the same hour as the Princess herself. After the
death of her mother, at only three years of age, a Table of State was projected for her. — See
Lady Margaret Brian's Letter to Cromwell, and Thompson's Court of Henry VIII. ii. 555, 6.
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 7
male heir of Henry VIII., and consequently, independently of the will, upon the
fair ground of legitimate inheritance : next, Mary ; at one time universally
regarded also as the legitimate offspring of Henry, but afterwards set aside as
illegitimate, upon a question never more than partially resolved, though perhaps
rightly resolved by those, who, after having determined the marriage with a
brother's widow to be contrary to the law of God, disputed the Pope's power
to dispense with such laws. These decisions it must be admitted, were never
received or allowed by the Catholic party, as just and right ;* Mary, therefore,
as a Catholic, might also to the hour of her death, very fairly have looked upon
her own birth to have been legitimate, and to have had, as much as her bro-
ther, an hereditary claim to the crown, as well as a right by her father's will;
but on the accession of Elizabeth, the validity of those decisions may be said
to have operated exactly as much in her favour with the whole Protestant
party, as their invalidity had operated in favour of Mary, amongst the Ro-
manists during the preceding reign. Elizabeth, therefore, as an anti-Romanist,
had an equal right to look upon her own birth as legitimate : — and thus, both
these Princesses, as well as their unhappy and unfortunate mothers, may
with much reason, as far as regarded themselves personally and individually,
be said to stand clear of all those stains and taints of infamy, with which their
several connexions with Henry and the crown of England, have since been
branded. As Catholics, Katherine of Aragon and Mary her daughter, had
the plea of a papal dispensation in their favour, which, if valid, as they must
be allowed to have felt it to be, neither the caprice of Henry, nor even the power
of a British parliament, could in their estimation invalidate. Elizabeth, on the
contrary, had on her side, as it must appear now, a still stronger plea, of the
utter invalidity of a papal bull, to render a marriage lawful, which had been
contracted in violation of, or in opposition to, the revealed word of God.
The reader, as we proceed in the history of the extraordinary reign we have
now entered upon, will see the reasons for our touching upon these points so par-
ticularly. Elizabeth seems to us, we must confess, to have been not only " full
royally born," but as royally educated ; which in itself deserves to be considered
as no trifling proof or confirmation of the former.
* With the exception, it should be observed, of Francis I., who, in the most formal manner
possible, admitted Henry's marriage with Katherine to be incestuous, and her offspring by him
spurious, and his marriage with Anne to be consequently valid and good, and Elizabeth entirely
legitimate. — See Burnet's Records, vol. iii. No. XXXVI.
8 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
As to the early extraordinary attainments of this renowned Princess, we con-
ceive them to be authenticated by the most indisputable evidences of history.
Proofs indeed are not wanting at this moment, to establish the fact beyond all
power of contradiction ; we have still preserved in her own hand-writing, spe-
cimens of her learning and ready talents, beyond the ordinary accomplishments
of the female sex, and which cannot, we should think fail, to excite surprise and
admiration in all who may have the means of access to them. Camden's account
of her, certainly savours somewhat of extravagance, though not in all points. He
describes her, as " of admirable beauty, and well deserving a crown ; of a modest
gravity, excellent wit, royal soul, happy memory, and indefatigably given to the
study of learning, insomuch as before she was seventeen years of age, she un-
derstood well the Latin, French, and Italian tongues,* and had an indifferent
knowledge of the Greek ; neither did she neglect music, so far as it became a prin-
cess, being able to sing sweetly and play handsomely on the lute."
Though this be the evidence of a contemporary, and one who knew her well,
and Camden's account seems to be corroborated by Sir Richard Baker, another
contemporary, who uses exactly the same words, yet her " admirable beauty" re-
mains questionable. f That she well " deserved a crown" is true ; if magnanimity
and resolution ; a wise choice of counsellors ; defiance of enemies ; regard for
the honour, and care for the security, wealth, and prosperity of her subjects, be
the proper tests of such qualifications. Her " modest gravity "was not so constant
* Ascham and Huentius add Spanish. She used to translate from the French, but her pronuncia-
tion of the latter language seems not to have been generally approved by foreigners ; as that tell-
tale Bayle has been careful to inform us, in his multifarious but entertaining notes from du Man-
ner's Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de Hollande. From the Latin she translated many works,
as is well known, and several from the Greek. For a full account of the literary productions of
Elizabeth, see Parke's edition of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, and the Preface to Nichols's
Progresses.
t A remarkable difference of opinion seems to have prevailed in regard to her complexion.
Naunton says it was/atV ; Bohun that her skin was of pure white; but Michele, the Venetian ambas-
sador, who had probably frequent opportunities of seeing her, and wrote of her in his dispatches
to the Senate, describes her to have been " olivastra in compkxione," of an olive or dark com-
plexion. (See Lingard.) But in the report, as it is to be seen in Mr. Ellis's Second Series of Ori-
ginal Letters, the words of the original being " di bella carne enchorche olivatra," it is rendered, " her
complexion fine though rather sallow." This paper of Michele. is extremely curious, and we
are much indebted to Mr. Ellis for the pains he has taken to make it intelligible to the public
in his entertaining and valuable publication.
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 9
and habitual as to secure her, by all accounts, from occasional bursts of passion
and anger, highly unbecoming her sex and station ; nor was her " excellent wit,"
always so pure and chaste and feminine as might have been expected from
one in so high and elevated a condition of life; her "royal soul," if it were
such politically, which seems to have been the case in a great abundance of
instances, was certainly deficient in some princely virtues, and not so softened
by refinement of manners as might have been wished. To what has been
said of her literary attainments we have already expressed our assent.
The famous Roger Ascham, the fellow-collegian and friend of Sir William
Cecil, and public orator at Cambridge, became, after Grindal, her principal
preceptor; and it is well known how triumphantly, in his "Schoolmaster,"
a work expressly addressed to Sir William, he challenged, or defied, all
"the young gentlemen of England," nay all "the prebendaries of the
church," to match his "onemayd," in " excellencie of learning and know-
ledge of divers tongues."
It is certainly very extraordinary, that with these great talents, and attainments
beyond her sex, and with such strong traits in her character, Elizabeth should
have borne her faculties so meekly* during the three preceding reigns, as to ar-
rive at this momentous period of her life, with so little embarrassment in regard to
her succession, that her sister was scarcely deceased, before the event was com-
municated to both Houses of Parliament, by Hethe, Archbishop of York,§ Lord
Chancellor, and her accession announced at the same time, as " the true, lawfull,
and right inheritrice to the crown ;" to use the Archbishop's own words, as cited
by Holinshed. " Scarce had he spoken the word," says Camden, " when all from
all sides cried and recried, God save Queen Elizabeth, Reign she most long, Reign
she most happily.'" Nor was there any time lost, in publicly proclaiming
her title, with all the accustomed solemnities, both in London and West-
minster, in the presence not only of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and other civic
authorities, but of many of the first nobility, and magistracy of the realm ; a
deputation of the Council being at the same time appointed to attend upon
her Majesty, to communicate the proceedings that had already taken place, and
receive her commands.
* Her amiable brother Edward VI., as is well known, gave her a name which certainly bespoke
such meekness of character: — he was used to call her, his " Sweet Sister Temperance."
f Bishop of Ely (Aikin); but the Bishop of Ely at that time was Thirleby, who was engaged in
an embassy abroad.
VOL. II. C
I0 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
At this time Elizabeth had her residence at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire,
a place of her own, it having been made over to her in the year 1550 by her
brother Edward VI., as parcel of the lands belonging to the Bishoprick of Ely,
and hence called Hatfield Episcopi sive Regis* It had been indeed prescribed
to her, as her settled abode, by her sister Mary, not long after her release from
imprisonment at Woodstock, in the year 1555 ; and she had been consigned,
while there, to the special care of Sir Thomas Pope, a gentleman of singular
worth and integrity, well inclined indeed, not only to shew respect to his royal
charge, and occasionally to enliven the dull hours of her comparative seclusion
from the world, but to connive at her retaining about her person many sincere
Protestants ; to the great discomfiture of Gardiner, who did not hesitate to
exert his power with Mary to have some of them removed ; some even of the
Princess's chief favourites. At this period, indeed, Elizabeth seems un-
doubtedly to have stood upon better terms with her sister, than had previously
been the case ; she had even received from her the gift of a valuable ring, as
a positive token of a perfect reconciliation ; and, in the spring of the year 1557,
Mary had paid the Princess a visit at Hatfield, on which occasion she was, by the
care, and too much at the private expense of Sir Thomas Pope, most royally
entertained, with much music, dramatic exhibitions, and bear-baiting, the
fashionable amusements of the day. This visit appears to have so well satisfied
Mary, as to have induced her to give in return, an entertainment, to the Princess
and her suite, at Richmond, not altogether so costly, yet very magnificent.
It has been conjectured that the Queen's cordiality towards her sister at
this period was occasioned by some jealousy she had conceived of her absent
husband, King Philip, who was supposed to have been captivated by the
charms of the Duchess of Lorraine ; and whom, in conjunction with the Duchess
of Parma, he had incautiously sent to England to prevail upon Elizabeth to
marry the Duke of Savoy ; a step the Queen so warmly resented, as absolutely
to prohibit their resort to Hatfield for that purpose.
Whatever may have been the actual state of things, amidst such a per-
plexity of views and feelings, it seems to be certain, that Hatfield House had
for the last three years, been to Elizabeth a more agreeable and peaceful
residence than any she had enjoyed before. She had a large but reasonable
* It is scarcely necessary to observe, that it is now the seat of the the Marquess of Salisbury,
the lineal descendant of Lord Burghley. James the First gave it to the first Earl of Salisbury
in exchange for Thcnf-nlds ; of which we shall have more to say.
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 11
establishment ; she lived unsuspected ; and under the superintendance of Sir
Thomas Pope, the Founder of Trinity College, Oxford,* she had been able
to indulge her taste for classical literature, and for such studies, as, though
generally accounted above her sex, were in those days known to confer dis-
tinction on many ladies connected with the Court.
It was in this her peaceful retirement, comparatively so at least, con-
sidering the suspicions under which she had previously laboured,! that this
illustrious Princess received the first intimation of her sister's demise, and
of her own accession to the Crown ; and it is generally supposed to have been
communicated to her by Lord Burghley, in a particular spoty in the grounds
of Hatfield House, pointed out, we believe, to all casual visitors of that
princely residence, to this very day.
On the 17th day of November, in the year 1558, it was that Lord
Burghley had to announce to Elizabeth the momentous event, not only of Mary's
death, but of her being received, acknowledged, and proclaimed the lawful
successor of her deceased sister ;J from which instant, to the hour of his
death, forty years afterwards, he may very justly be said to have been her chief
and most confidential adviser, counsellor, and minister. He was, indeed, as
we have observed, fully competent to be so ; no man could know better than he
did, all that had been passing in the preceding reigns ; no man could better
know the real interests of England, and the situation in which the new Sove-
* Fuller, in his Church History, speaking of Sir Thomas, says, " I find this Mr. Pope," (as
then unknighted) " a principal visitor at the dissolution of Abbeys. Now as none were losers
employed in that service, so we find few refunding back to charitable uses ; and perchance this
rnan alone the thankful Samaritan who made a publique acknowledgment."
t Naunton, speaking of her condition under her sister Mary, says, " It was resolved and her
destinie decreed to set her an apprentice in the schoole of affliction, and to draw her through
that ordeal fire of tryall, the better to mould and fashion her to rule and sovereigntie ; which
finished, and Fortune calling to minde that the time of her servitude was expired, gave up her
indentures, and therewithall delivered into her custodie, a sceptre as the reward of her service."
I The following is the account we find in Naunton's Fragmenta Regalia, of the way in which
she received the intelligence : " Being then at Hatfield, and under a guard, and the parliam* at
sitting at the self-same time ; at the news of the Queen's death, and her own proclamation by the
general consent of the House, and the publick sufferance of the people ; falling on her knees, after
a good time of respiration, she uttered this verse of the Psalm, "A Domino factum estillud, et est
mirabile in oculis nostris;" This is the Lord's work, and it is wonderful in our eyes. And we find
it to this day on the stamp of her gold, and this on her silver coin : " Posui Deum adjutorem
meum ;" I have chosen God for my help.
,2 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
reign was placed, with regard, as well to the several parties at home, as to all
neighbouring or foreign Powers .* We may reasonably consider him to have
become, by this time, a consummate politician, and to have known all
bearings of the politics, not of England only, but of Europe-politics, embracing
not merely civil, but ecclesiastical questions, never before brought to so decisive a
trial and issue. He now stood at the right hand of the new Sovereign of England,
to give her the whole benefit of that knowledge and experience, and she dv
hesitate, by her early call upon him, to acknowledge that such were her expec
tations It was rather as an old than a new servant that she now recognized hm
he received, indeed, as an eminent writer has observed, the first honour she had
to confer, as Queen, and became the first avowed Counsellor she ever had ;
fact, the very speech she is reported to have made to the deputation sent by the
Council to wait on her at Hatfield, is said to have been prepared and written by
Lord Burghley ;t and, it is very certain, that the minute of steps to be
taken on her first elevation to the throne, was drawn up by him ; in which
there is undoubtedly such a compactness of expression, and such an extent of
observation, as must be allowed to bespeak no common talents in a person of
Lord Burghley 's age. It is still preserved in the valuable collection of Cottonian
Manuscripts in the British Museum, Titus, c. x. 21. to the following effect.
I. To consider the Proclamation, and to proclaim it, and to send the same to
all manner of places and Sheriffs, with speed, and to print it.
II. To prepare the Tower, and to appoint the custody thereof to trusty per-
sons; and to write to all the keepers of forts and castles in the Queen's name.
III. To consider for the removing to the Tower, and the Queen there to settle
her officers and Council.
* Voltaire could discover the necessity, in order to become properly acquainted with the life and
reign of Elizabeth, ;of tracing matters back to the times of her predecessors.— General History,
partv. ch. xiii. But another foreign writer has gone much farther in estimating the amo«nt of know-
ledge requisite to a right understanding of the reign of Elizabeth. " L' histoire d' Elisabeth,"
says Mademoiselle Keralio, " life & celle de plusieurs royaumes, demandoit une connoissance
generale de 1'histoire d' Eaate, &' Irlande, de France, d'Espagne, des Pays-Bat, et de quelques ,
points de 1' histoire ecdesiastique."— She might have said even more than this.
t Dr. Lingard calls this " a formal and studied discourse." We shall not dispute it ; it could
scarcely have been otherwise. Let us consider the alternative. Had there been no form and
no study displayed, could it have been suitable to the occasion ?— Her Majesty, we happen to
know, could have spoken for herself, extempore; but on such an occasion, and according to
the custom of Courts, a little form and study, if we grant the charge, could not surely have been
out of place.
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 13
IV. To make a stay of passages to all the ports until a certain day ; and to
consider the situation of all places dangerous towards France and Scotland,
especially in this charge.
V. To send special messengers to the Pope, Emperor, the Kings of Spain and
Denmark, and to the State of Venice.
VI. To send new Commissioners to the Earl of Arundel and Bishop of Ely,
(who were treating a peace at Cambray ;) and to send one into Ireland with a
new commission ;• and letters under the Queen's hand to all Ambassadors with
foreign Princes to authorize them therein.
VII. To appoint Commissioners for the interment of the late Queen.
VIII. To appoint Commissioners for the Coronation, and the day.
IX. To make a continuance of the Term, with patents to the Chief Justice,
to the Lord Treasurer, Justices of each Bench, Barons, and Masters of the
Rolls, with inhibition, Quod non conferant aliquod officium.
X. To appoint new Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace, or continue the old,
by a Proclamation to be sent to the Sheriffs under the Great Seal.
XI. To inhibit by Proclamation the making over of any money by exchange,
without knowledge given to the Queen's Majesty, and to charge all manner of
persons that either have made any, or have been privy to any exchange made,
by the space of one month before the 17th of this month.
XII. To consider the preacher of Paul's Cross, that no occasion be given by
him to stir any dispute touching the governance of the Realm.
But the account of these things, as we find it in Lord Burghley's Life by a
Domestic, must not be omitted: "When Quene Elizabeth, beganne her most
happie reign, Sir William Cecill, for his truth and tried service to her, was worthely
called and honourably advanced by her Majestic to be her Secretarie and Coun-
sellor, and was first sworne of anie Counsellor she had at Hatfield, where she
laie at her first coming to her Crowne, wherein he then beganne to kindle the light,
that ever since gave light and life to this State. Her Majesties Christian
princely care and inclination concurring with his wise and provident counsell,
tooke then rooting, to roote out popery and superstition, and to plante the prac-
tise and profession of the Gospel in this realme, and the peaceable platform of
government, we nowe enjoye in this state, with so' happie peaceable and plen-
tifull successe as for so long a tyme of government, so famous exploits and so
manie notable things happeninge in the tyme of her Majesties reigne, are more
admirable in this age than matchable in former, in all the nations of Christen-
14 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. £1558.
dome ; which beganne and contynued first by Godes goodnes, and her Majes-
ties godly princely care and providence, was also not a little furdered and per-
fected by his pollicie, paines, and contynuall carefull counsell, never slacking the
service, nor loosinge the opportunitie, ever esteeming his greatest paines his
greatest pleasure, to please his prince and pleasure his contrie."
The Queen did not remove from Hatfield till after she had established a new
Council ; and in order that her first measures, notwithstanding the rigorous pro-
ceedings of the last reign, might appear conciliatory rather than repulsive, she de-
termined to retain no fewer than thirteen of her sister's Council, all of them reputed
Catholics ;* adding to them, as Camden says, " with a certain moderation and
temperance according to the respect of the times," only eight of her own, or the
reformed party. The thirteen Counsellors retained, were Hethe, Archbishop of
York, the Marquess of Winchester, Lord Treasurer; the Earls of Arundel, Shrews-
bury, Derby, and Pembroke ; the Lord Clinton (Lord Admiral), William Lord
Howard of Effingham (Lord Chamberlain), Sir Thomas Cheynie,| Sir William
Petre, Sir John Mason, Sir Richard Sackville, and Dr. Nicholas Wotton, Dean
ofCanterbury.
The eight added to the above, and who were held to be all of the reformed
party, were the Marquess of Northampton, the Earl of Bedford,J Sir Thomas
* Rapin and others call them zealous Catholics. This does certainly not apply to all. Mr.
Hallam, in his Constitutional History of England, says, " Her Council was formed of a very few
Catholics, of several pliant conformists with all changes, and of some known friends to the Pro-
testant interests."
t Sir Thomas Cheynie died shortly after in the Tower of London. We have already had occa-
sion to notice the splendid establishment of this worthy Knight (see vol. i. p. 16.); though by
some oversight he is there called Sir John. Holinshed's account of him is certainly very curious :
" For 20 years before he died he kept in his stable winter and summer 20 great horse at the least,
and 8 or 9 geldings, besides 16 or 17 kept at grass. The number of the servants to whom he gave
liveries was 205, and he paid them all great wages quarterly, fed them with plenty of good meat
and drink, and allowed them " good featherbeds" to sleep upon ; to all he left either annuities or a
whole year's wages, and made provision that till they got other employment they should have an
allowance of meat and drink at his house. He had been brought up in Henry the Vllth's house ; and
had therefore before he died served three Kings and two Queens, chiefly in the office of Treasurer
of the Household, which he held at the time of his death, being besides Warden of the Cinque
Ports. He was one that had had the honour of justing with King Henry VIII. and of being
overthrown by his Majesty."
I For an account of the Marquess of Northampton and the Earl of Bedford, see Lloyd's State
Worthies. Lloyd asserts, that the Marquess of Northampton, the Earl of Bedford, and Sir Wil-
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 15
Parry,* Sir Edward Rogers, Sir Ambrose Cave,f Sir Francis Knolles, Sir Wil-
liam CECIL, and Sir Nicholas Bacon; the latter (who, by his second marriage
with one of the celebrated daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, stood in the relation-
ship of brother-in-law to Sir William) being made Keeper of the Great Seal,
and Sir William himself, (" a man of excellent wisdom, and one of a thousand,"
as an old writer calls him, upon the occasion of this appointment,) Secretary of
State.J
The author of the " Nugae Antiquse," records it as a fact, that the Queen on
appointing him one of her Council, addressed him to the following effect :
" I give you this charge, that you shall be of my privy-council, and content
yourself to take pains for me and my realm. This judgment I have of you, that
you will not be corrupted with any gift, and that you will be faithful to the
state, and that, without respect of my private will, you will give me that counsel
that you think best : and that if you shall know any thing necessary to be
declared to me of secresy, you shall shew it to myself only, and assure your-
self I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein. And therefore herewith I
charge you."
We may now see of what importance it probably was, to the revived cause of
the Reformation, that the two relatives, Bacon and Cecil, should have remained in
Ham Cecil, were the only persons to whom the Queen communicated her design of Reformation,
and correcting the Common Prayer ; and they ordered affairs so, that the Protestants should be
in hope, and yet the Papists should not be out of hope.
* " His (Sir Thomas Parry's) family," says Lodge, " had been connected with that of Secretary
Cecil, by an inter-marriage of a very remote date, and that Minister (Cecil) of whose pains to dis-
cover, and conscientious readiness to acknowledge, even his most distant relations, I have many
original proofs in my possession, probably introduced him to Elizabeth, in whose service he had
been for some years."
+ Sir Ambrose Cave was a native of Stamford, a great friend of Cecil's, whose eldest sister Mar-
garet married into the family. It may be looked upon, perhaps, as rather a compliment to the ta-
lents, characters, and principles of the new Counsellors, that they should be thus stigmatised in
the famous Bull of Pius V. deposing Elizabeth, 1569; speaking of her first proceedings on her ac-
cession, it states, that the new Queen " Regium Consilium ex Anglica Nobilitate confectum di-
remit (which however was not true), illudque obscuris hominibus Hceretids complevit." — Burnet,
Records, ii. B. iii. No. XIII.
t The author of the Memoirs of Lord Burghley, speaking of the Council, says, " The Privy Coun-
cil, by the recommendation of Cecil, was composed of loyal Papists, and moderate Protestants. "-
Mary's two Secretaries, who were now removed, were Bourn, and Boxal. Sir William Petre, was
made joint Secretary with Cecil.
16 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
England, during the short reign of Mary. The thirteen Catholic Counsellors,
were well known to both, nor could it be unknown to either, that most of
them had complied with all the changes which were made in the national religion
since the latter end of Henry's reign, and were such adepts in the fashionable
art of adapting their principles to the visible complexion of the times,* as to
present no great hindrances to a fresh revolution.!
While the Queen remained at Hatfield she sat in Council every day, after its
first appointment, which took place on the 20th of November. On the 23d, she
took her journey towards London, with a large attendance of Lords, Knights,
Gentlemen, and Ladies, with all their . servants and trains, a special summons
having been sent to assemble them upon the occasion.;}; On her first arrival
in London, she took up her abode at the Lord North's in the Charter House,
or dissolved Monastery of the Chartreux, where she remained till the 28th,
sitting, as before, in Council every day.
On the 28th her Majesty passed in great state from the Charter House to
the Tower; the streets being new gravelled for the purpose; the Lord Mayor
carried her sceptre, and the Earl of Pembroke the sword of state. The Queen
herself rode on horseback, in a sumptuous dress of purple velvet, and behind
her, as her Master of Horse, the famous Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of
* See Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope.
t That Sir William looked forward from the first to another change, is to be collected from
a curious letter preserved among the Burghley MSS. from Sir Richard Shelley, and to be seen in
Strype, (Annals, i. 261.) in which he reminds LoVd Burghley (as he then was) of an answer he had
given in his (Sir J. Shelley's) hearing to Lord Paget, and which had made a great impression on his
mind. Lord Paget it seems having observed to Cecil that Queen Mary had returned the realm
wholly Catholic, the latter rather eagerly answered, My Lord, you are therein so far deceived that
I fear rather an inundation of the contrary part, so universal a boiling and bubbling I sec of
some stomachs that cannot yet digest the crudity of that time. That Lord Burghley might
reasonably calculate on the practicability of a fresh change, seems to be sufficiently proved
by the reports extant of the effect the Queen's accession had upon the holders of Church prefer-
ment. There are some differences in the estimates recorded, but it is pretty generally believed
that of 9,400 beneficed clergy, only 177 relinquished their preferment, out of attachment to the
Roman See.
J The summons bears date November 21, 1558. It was sent by Sir Ralph Sadler, and has the
signatures of the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Thomas Parry, Lord Clinton, Lord Howard, Sir Edward
Rogers, Sir William Cecil, and Sir Ambrose Cave. — See Strype 's Annals, vol. i. part ii. no. 11.
where may be also seen the names of the noblemen who were summoned to attend. Burnet
mistakes the day of her removal. — See Lodge, i. 301.
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 17
Leicester; the trumpets sounding, and guns firing all the way. Many speeches
also being addressed to her by children at different places, according to the
fashion of the times.
We cannot forbear copying upon this occasion the following just remarks, by
the author of the Court of Queen Elizabeth : " With what vivid and what
affecting impressions of the vicissitudes attending on the great must she have
passed again within the antique walls of that fortress, once her dungeon, now
her palace ! She had entered it by the traitors' gate, a terrified and defenceless
prisoner, smarting under many wrongs, hopeless of deliverance, and apprehend-
ing nothing less than an ignominious death. She had quitted it still a captive,
under the guard of armed men, to be conducted she knew not whither. She
returned to it in all the pomp of royalty, surrounded by the ministers of her
power, ushered by the applauses of her people ; the cherished object of every
eye, the idol of every heart."*
At the Tower she appears to have continued (for there is, as usual, a great
discordancy of dates) till the 5th of December ; on which day she is said to
have removed to Somerset House in the Strand ; there she rested again till the
the 23d of the same month, when she finally came to Westminster, where the
Parliament was to hold its sitting, and where she kept her Christmas. This
last removal to Westminster was attended with circumstances very gratifying to
the Queen, because, though very much in the adulatory style, they were
probably at bottom sincere ; but as we shall have to speak of similar page-
antries and compliments, on occasion of the Coronation, we shall at present
rather notice the solemnities attending the funeral of Queen Mary, which took
place ten days before the Queen came to Westminster, that is to say, on the
13th of December. It was conducted with much royal state and ceremony, an
image resembling the deceased Sovereign, being, according to the custom of
those times, placed on the chariot or hearse, covered with crimson velvet, the
crown on its head, and sceptre in its hand, and many costly rings on its fingers.
* The same writer notices also the following curious circumstance: " Elizabeth was attended
on her passage to the Tower by one who, like herself, returned with honour to that place of his
former captivity; but not, like herself, with a mind disciplined by adversity, to receive with mo-
deration and wisdom ' the good vicissitude of joy.' This person was Lord Robert Dudley,
whom the Queen had thus early encouraged to aspire to her future favours, by appointing him to
the office of her Master of the Horse." He was not long after made Knight of the Garter,
though disqualified by having been attainted of treason in the former reign ; so that it was neces-
sary to make a new decree to remove that stain. — See Ashmole, and the Lift of Leicester, 1727.
VOL. II. I>
18 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
One thing occurred to disturb the solemnities of the day. Bishop White,
having to preach the funeral sermon, inveighed so strongly against the return
of the Protestant fugitives, as to venture to assert, that whosoever should kill
them, would do a deed acceptable to God ; " Bonum factum si quis exules
reduces interfecerit." Jewel, in a letter to Peter Martyr, calls it, " Insanam et
turbulentissimam concionem." The text was curiously chosen, " I praised the
dead more than the living." Burnet, however, who saw a copy of it, says, he
had put into it some decent words of the Queen. — See the Sermon itself in
Strype's Memorials, iii. part ii. catalogue, no. Ixxxi.
On the day in which the ceremonies of Queen Mary's funeral began, the
remains of Cardinal Pole were conveyed from Lambeth to Canterbury, and
buried there; two Bishops, Pate of Worcester, and Goldwell of St. Asaph (his
ancient friends and the faithful companions of his long exile), being specially
permitted to attend the body, and to officiate in the service ; the one in English
and the other in Latin, as it has been asserted. Elizabeth and Cecil seem to
have been very desirous of shewing respect to the deceased Cardinal, both in
the ordering of his funeral, and in assisting his executor the Signior Prioli, to
recover all debts and arrears due to him. The statute of Philip and Mary,
repealing the act of attainder of the Cardinal, in the 31st year of the reign
of King Henry VIII. was also confirmed. No small proofs that they were
under some obligations to the Cardinal during the late reign, and possibly for
protection, otherwise nobody had done more, in his contest with Henry, to
alienate the regard of Elizabeth, touching the conduct both of her father and
mother. We shall always believe, as we have intimated in our first volume, that
Cecil had an influence with the Cardinal, friendly to the cause of the Refor-
mation, or at least to the liberal principles of Protestantism, and the protection
of the Princess Elizabeth. Strype (Annals, i. 72.) concludes that the letter
written to the Queen, by the Cardinal before his death, and sent to her by his
Chaplain, was intended to " satisfy her that he was in none of the faction
against her life and reign," and he conceives that the message accompanying
the letter, was to persuade her to continue the Roman Religion. It might be
so, but the purport of the letter is all we have to do with.
Three weeks had now nearly elapsed since Elizabeth had been proclaimed
Queen, and as almost as many councils had been holden as days had passed, we
may conclude that many measures had been adopted in conformity with the
minute presented to the Queen at Hatfield, by Cecil; dispatches were sent to all
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 19
her Ambassadors abroad, to announce her accession to the Crown, as having
devolved to her by direct inheritance, or, as the expression in her proclamation
runs, " as the only right heir by blood, and lawful succession."
We have already shewn, that she had a fair right to consider herself to have
been the right heir by blood; for though she had been bastardized by act of
Parliament in her father's lifetime, and virtually bastardized a second time,
by the act that restored Mary, and pronounced her mother's marriage with
Henry to be valid, notwithstanding all former acts and processes ; yet as her
immediate predecessor had been allowed the benefit of a legislative enactment,
to annul all that Henry had accomplished to invalidate his union with Katherine,
Elizabeth had surely as great a right to regard that union as incestuous, and
out of the protection of a papal dispensation ; which would of course render her
father's marriage with her mother, Queen Anne, lawful and good.* We do not
mean to say, that the disturbances that had taken place, in regard to both
marriages, were without effect upon the less disputable claims of others connected
with the Crown ; we are only endeavouring to prove, that if Elizabeth chose
to insist upon her legitimacy as giving her a nearer claim by blood, than the
descendants or representatives of Henry's sisters, she had a right to do it;
her legitimacy in the eyes of a large proportion of her subjects, was at the least
as certain as the legitimacy of Mary (which the Romanists in the last reign had
taken upon them to re-assert), could be in the eyes of another portion of her
subjects ; her " lawful succession, "f might nevertheless, in stricter terms, be
referred to Henry's will.*"
* It should be recollected that Mary herself had pronounced her mother's marriage with Henry
to be incestuous. Speaking of Elizabeth's professing to be a Catholic in the preceding reign,
" yet did not Queen Mary believe her," says Camden ; " remembering that she herself in the like
fear, had by letters, written with her own hand (which I myself have seen), not only for ever
renounced the Pope's authority in England, but also acknowledged her father to be Supreme
Head of the Church under Christ, and her mother's marriage with King Henry to have been
incestuous and unlawful." — Camden s Introduction. See also Mary's own letters to her father, and
one to Cromwell, containing a full submission to the King's pleasure, in all the points of religion.
— Bumet's History of the Reformation, vol. ii. Collection of Records, book ii. numbers iii. iv. v. vi.
f It has been thought very strange that Elizabeth never caused the sentence of her mother's
divorce, and the subsequent act declaring herself illegitimate, to be annulled ; and Camden,
Burnet, Rapin, &c. have attempted to assign reasons for this. May not the true cause have been,
that knowing as she did that her father's will being founded on an act of Parliament, gave her
a statutable and therefore legal right to the throne, and feeling in herself that she had reason
sufficient to account herself legitimate, notwithstanding Henry's capricious proceedings, she
20 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
It was certainly, however, a fortunate circumstance for Elizabeth, as far as
regarded the consent of her subjects generally, to her advancement to the Crown,
that those who might have claimed it clear of all those disturbances to which we
have alluded, were not in a situation to render their pretensions either agreeable
or safe to the nation, nor universally desirable to the Continental Powers.
Mary, Queen of Scotland, the descendant of Henry's elder sister, had been
just married to the Dauphin, heir to the French Crown ; a connexion little
likely to be favourable to the rights, liberties, and independence of England, and
very objectionable to Philip, should she be able thereby to add England to
Scotland, and both to France. While Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, the
descendant of Henry's younger sister, could have no family claim before the
Queen of Scotland, but in virtue of Henry's last will, which gave the Crown to
Elizabeth before her. To have brought her forward, therefore, in such palpable
competition with two more direct claimants, could scarcely have failed to excite
a civil war from one extremity of the island to the other. Nor was the Duchess
of Suffolk at all in a situation to produce an interest in her favour. Since the
execution of the Duke her husband, she had re-married with a Commoner, and
one much below her ; a young man, Adrian Stoakes, who held the situation of
Master of her Horse.*
might not like to have recourse to an expedient, which if valid in her own case, would have been
valid in the case of her predecessor, who had caused such acts against her own legitimacy to
be repealed, for if the repeal of the act of Mary's illegitimacy could make her legitimate, then
Elizabeth's actual legitimacy founded on the absolute nullity of Henry's marriage with Katherine,
would have been overthrown. It was very consistent with the magnanimity of her character to
despise such acts. Rapin says, " Dr. Burnet thinks the conduct of this Parliament (the first of
Elizabeth) equally pious and wise; I allow the first, but the continued endeavours to dethrone
Elizabeth, wholly founded on the sentence of her mother's divorce, and the subsequent act, will,
not permit me to believe it wisdom to leave them unrepealed." We have stated why we think
otherwise. — See also Camden, and what Burnet says upon it in his History of the Reformation,
vol. i. 376, 7. And after all, one act that was passed seems to have been a good deal overlooked;
we mean the act by which Elizabeth was " restored in blood to the late Queen Anne her
Highness's mother." — See Strype's Annals, i. part ii. 398. This must surely have been virtually
an annulment of her illegitimacy, on the mother's side, and consequently on her father's side,
though the latter might be kept out of sight for the reasons above.
* There is a tradition, that on Elizabeth exclaiming with surprise and indignation when the news
of this connexion reached her ears, " What, hath she married her Horse Keeper?" Cecil replied,
" Yes, Madam, and she says your Majesty would like to do so too:" — Lord Robert Dudley then
filling the office of Master of the Horse to the Queen. It is certainly very remarkable, and has
1558.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 21
Elizabeth, therefore, had certainly nothing to deter her from opening her
intercourse and communications with foreign Powers, upon a footing of perfect
equality as the Sovereign of a free, independent, and powerful kingdom ; reduced
in strength, certainly, by the disastrous politics of the last reign, but in no
manner sunk in her own estimation of the extent of her resources under a more
prudent and wise administration, or in the spirit of the people to resist oppression.
And, indeed, there was great cause immediately to consider the actual amount
of such resources, as well as the call that might speedily be made on the spirit
of the people to support their new Sovereign from hostile attempts. Many
accounts are to be seen in our histories of the alarming posture and aspect of
affairs at the period of the demise of Mary. The following is to be found in
Mallet's Life of Sir Nicholas Bacon, which we the more willingly copy, because
it is the chief object of that publication to shew, how all the difficulties he
enumerates were overcome afterwards, by the prudent, but vigorous measures of
a Government, in which the two relatives, Cecil and Bacon, are known to have
borne so great a share.*
" At her (Elizabeth's) accession to the throne," says this author, " she found
her revenues anticipated or exhausted ; her kingdom, through the sanguinary
madness of her predecessor, disjointed and broken of its vigour within ; at the
same time, unsupported by allies, and without consideration abroad. — She
found the nation four millions in debt ; a sum then almost incredible. Her
navy was fallen into decay and almost abandoned — and she was associated in a
war against the power of France and Scotland."
The observant author of the Memoirs of William Cecil, Lord Burghley,
published in 1738, takes nearly the same view of things in the following terms :
been noticed as a proof of the spuriousness of Henry's will, that, in passing over his two nieces,
Frances and Eleanor, and giving the Crown to their heirs before them, the son of Adrian Stoakes
would have inherited the Crown before his mother. — See Secret Memoirs of Robert Dudley, Earl of
Leicester, p. 169.
* Voltaire has given us a pretty fair account of the state of Europe, about this period, in the
following terms : " After the reign of Charles V.," he observes, "four great Powers constituted
the balance of power in Christendom ; Spain, by its treasures in the New World ; France, by
itself and by its situation, which hindered the communication between the vast dominions of
Philip II.; Germany, by the multitude of its princes, who, though divided among themselves,
were united for the defence of their country; England, after the death of Mary, by the political
conduct of Queen Elizabeth only, for its dominions were no great matter ; Scotland, instead of
forming a compact body with it, was its enemy, and Ireland a burthen."
22 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1558.
" At home, the nation was greatly disturbed, though not disaffected, the minds
of men being much heated in matters of religion ; those of the Popish fearing,
those of the Protestant expecting an alteration ; the generality harassed with
taxes, and little inclined to submit even to necessary impositions ; the treasures
of the Crown exhausted, the Crown itself in debt, and mightily dishonoured
by the late feeble administration, the loss of Calais, and the weak management
of foreign affairs; abroad, many enemies, without one sincere ally ; France
favouring the title of Mary Queen of Scots, and secretly intending, under
colour thereof, to attack England by the way of Scotland; Spain jealous, the
Emperor lukewarm, the Pope outrageous ; the nearer states of Europe in their
conduct doubtful, those more remote, indifferent; trade much decayed, and
the English coin scandalously debased : in a word, without, a gloomy prospect
of impending danger; within, heart-burnings and divisions, a naked land, and
an impoverished people."
We cannot be expected to omit what follows, as it evidently proceeds from
the pen of a powerful writer, and no mean judge, of the subject he handles.
"As Sir William Cecil," he proceeds, " directed the Queen's councils before
he was her counsellor, and was admitted to that high office in the Jirst council
she held, so without the least interval of coldness, he continued in her confi-
dence as long as he lived ; being her sole oracle in State, as Sir Nicholas
Bacon was in Law."
The most authentic and public account of the state of the nation indeed,
is of course to be looked for in the speech of the eminent person just named,
in his first address to the parliament, and delivered in the Queen's presence ;
but before we proceed to speak of the parliament, we ought perhaps to give
some account of the Coronation which was appointed, according to the VHIth
Article in the minute of Sir William, a few days before the meeting of that
assembly. The latter being fixed for the 23d of January (adjourned afterwards
to the 25th), and the Coronation for the 15th of the same month.
Though the Queen was to be crowned in the abbey church at Westminster,
as usual upon such solemn occasions, yet to add to the magnificence of the
ceremony, it was judged right that she should previously pass from her palace
in Westminster, to the royal apartments in the Tower, which would afford
her an opportunity of returning afterwards through the whole town, and
exhibiting herself more generally to the eager multitude. The streets at that
time being narrow and ill-paved, the Thames was, as has been well observed,
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 23
the great thoroughfare of the metropolis. The royal palaces, anl mansions
of the nobility, being, for this very purpose, situated on its banks ; three days
before the coronation therefore, namely, on the 12th of January, the state
barges of the corporation and city companies, highly ornamented, having
repaired to Whitehall, to attend her Majesty, she was conveyed from thence
with great state, to the Tower of London, a large attendance of royal barges
having joined those of the city.
Two days after, she took her passage back to Westminster through the town
in her carriage, with an immense accompaniment of Lords and Ladies, all nicely
apparelled in crimson velvet, and their horses covered with the same. The
streets were gravelled, the conduits new painted and highly beautified, and
pageants set up in abundance of places to salute her as she passed. Music
and firing of guns adding much to the triumph of the day. Her Majesty's
patience and hardihood of constitution must certainly have been great, to have
enabled her, in the cold month of January, to bear with any appearance of
delight, the many stops and interruptions she met with, from the multiplicity of
pageants and devices, where she was obliged to listen, in almost endless suc-
cession, to the poetical rhapsodies composed for the occasion, and bear her part
in the allegorical exhibitions prepared to do her honour. * It has been common
to notice one of these in particular, as having a connexion with the Reformation
of Religion, and of the disposition of the citizens at this time, notwithstanding
the persecutions of the last reign. From a cave beneath one of the pageants, in
which the eight beatitudes were exhibited, and so managed, as severally to
* It would be needless to attempt to describe all that passed upon this occasion, the curious
reader may find enough to amuse, if not to weary him, in Nichols and Holinshed, who have been
careful to preserve all the verses that were spoken at the different resting places. One thing
seems certain, that the young Queen knew well how to humour and gratify the enthusiasm of the
multitude, by a great mixture of affability and dignity, suitable to the occasion, and which shews
her to have been, when she chose it, as Collier says, 'a great mistress of behaviour.' At 25 years
of age, after every allowance for flattery, to which she became subsequently a dupe, we may
easily suppose, from the many portraits remaining of her, and the descriptions to be read of her,
that her personal appearance must have been such, as to set her off greatly to the admiration of a
populace, disposed to be pleased with their new Queen. Bohun and Naunton represent her to
have been possessed of great beauty; Camden's account of her has been given; but there can
be no doubt of the royal dignity she very early learnt to assume, and which, softened by a
great courtesy of manners, /m all public occasions, must have bee i very captivating, and condu-
cive to her popularity.
24 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
bear some application to her Majesty, a figure of Time, with his scythe and
wings came forth, accompanied by a young person clad in white silk, to
represent his daughter, Truth; the latter holding in her hand an English Bible,
which she offered to the Queen's acceptance. Elizabeth received the present
as it was intended, kissed it as the true Verbum Veritatis* declared she would
often and repeatedly peruse it, and holding up both her hands, returned thanks,
with remarkable solemnity, to the devisers of so choice a gift, and so appropriate
an emblem. It was on the succeeding day, January 15th,f 1558-9, that she
was at length solemnly crowned, by Oglethorpe, Bishop of Carlisle; the rest of
the bench, with Hethe at their head, refusing to assist at the ceremony ; partly
through distrust of the Queen's intentions; partly out of tenderness to the
threatened cause of Romanism,— the Queen having already forbidden Ogle-
thorpe to elevate the host, and allowed the reading of the English service;
and finally, because they judged, that if Oglethorpe had refused, without
the hands of a Bishop she could not have been Queen. J During this ceremony,
and at one of the most important parts of it, the Secretary appears to have
been placed particularly nigh to the Queen's person ; since in the account to
be seen in the Ashmolean Museum, when the Queen approached the " aulter,"
where " kussyns (cushions) of gold" were placed for her use, we read that
" Secretary Cycill, delivered a booke to the Busshop, and there was a Bysshop §
standing at the left hand of the aulter."
* It is ratlier singular that her predecessor, Queen Mary, should have used a seal, whereon,
under her figure on horseback, were these words, " Temporis Tilia Veritas," and on her coins,
was a representation, as Sandford writes, of " Winged Time drawing Truth out of a well ;" and
he adds that she bore this motto by persuasion of the Clergy. When a Bible was presented to
Mary Queen of Scots, among the pageantries at Edinburgh, she is reported to have exhibited
marks of displeasure — Knox.
+ Collier has it January 14th, but that was the day on which she proceeded from the Tower to
Westminster, which day, by an odd mistake in Murdin, is marked in Lord Burghley's own notes
as January 4th ; this must certainly be a misprint. Burnet says, she returned from the Tower on
the 13th, having gone there on the 12th; this is wrong, she stayed two days at the Tower, and
returned on the 14th.
t On the proclamation of her title, she was declared to be, not simply Defender of the Faith,
but " Defender of the trewe, ancient, and Catholic Faithe," which had some meaning in it.
^ It might be difficult to say who this Bishop was, as, according to Collier, Hethe and the rest
of that order absented themselves, while the Protestant Bishops, Barlow, Scory, and Coverdale,
lay under a sentence of deprivation. The service was certainly performed according to the
ancient custom, and directed by the Roman Pontifical, but without any elevation of the host.
1559-1 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
According to the IVth, Vth, and Vlth Articles of Sir William's celebrated
Memorial, presented to the Queen at Hatfield, it had been proposed, " to con-
sider the safety of all places dangerous towards France and Scotland; especially
in this change.— To send special messengers to the Pope, Emperor, the Kings
of Spain and Denmark, and to the state of Venice.— To send new powers
to the Earl of Arundel and Bishop of Ely (who were then treating a peace at
Cambray), and to send one into Ireland, with a new commission, and letters
under the Queen's hands, to all Ambassadors with foreign Princes, to authorise
them therein."
All these things appear to have obtained immediate attention, so that before
the meeting of Parliament, and even before the Coronation, we find from Lord
Burghley's own memorandums, that on the 23d of November, the very day
the Queen quitted Hatfield, Lord Cobham was sent to the Low Countries, to
the King of Spain (Philip being absent at the time of Mary's demise), and
that he carried with him a new commission and instructions to the Earl of
Arundel, Bishop of Ely, and'Dr. Wotton.* That on the 2Gth, Sir Thomas
There had been no time yet for the repealing Mary's laws, which had repealed those of Henry
and Edward ; what passed therefore was rather a compliance with the laws, than the religion, and '
may perhaps be regarded, as some excuse for the compliance Elizabeth would afterwards have
insisted on with respect to her own laws, before the principles of legal toleration were anywhere
properly understood. Burnet, in his notes upon Sanders, has remarked upon the clemency of the
Queen, in not immediately dismissing the Bishops who had refused to crown her. Hethe, indeed,
was often kindly noticed by her after his deprivation. Mr. Butler, however, considers their
behaviour at this time to have been highly correct and loyal, because they did not oppose the
Coronation after their refusal to crown her. They did homage, and only sighed and submitted
when they saw her break her coronation oath.— Book of the R. C. Church, 224-5. It is however
extremely certain that many popish zealots, unrestrained by the Bishops, preached against Eliza-
beth's legitimacy, and in abuse of her mother, favouring and advancing the title of the Queen of
Scots.
* In Strype's Annals, i. 37 and 49, (Oxford edition, 1816,) it is said and repeated, that
Elizabeth sent over the Earl of Arundel, Lord Chamberlain, to join the other Commissioners; but,
Lord Arundel was there already, as not only Camden and others write, but as is proved by a
dispatch from Flanders to the Council, dated Nov. 18th, 1558, the very day after Mary died, and
which has his signature. It was the Lord Howard of Effingham, who was sent to assist the
other commissioners, and who actually was Lord Chamberlain at the time, which indeed Strype
also notices, p. 48; so that the mistake is very evident. Rapin says, Lord Howard of Effing-
ham was sent, but takes no notice of Lord Arundel as a commissioner. Collier says, Lord
Howard of Effingham, was (with Lord Cobham) furnished with powers to go on with the treaty
of Cambray. (Vol. ii. 410.) But Lord Cobham, though he carried indeed fresh powers, Nov. 23»
VOL. II. E
-26 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559-
Chaloner was sent to the Emperor Ferdinand, being at Cambray, and that on
the 14th of Dec. the day immediately preceding the Coronation, Lord Thomas
Howard was dispatched as commissioner into the Low Countries, to join with
Dr.Wotton at Cercamp. Killegrew went to the Protestant Princes in Germany ;
Karne, * who had continued at Rome in the management of affairs since the
death of Edward VI. had orders to notify to the Pope, Mary's death, and the
accession of Elizabeth to the throne ; and similar notifications were sent to the
courts of Sweden and Denmark. France and Scotland, no doubt, required the
greatest attention ; and though there was a peace negotiating, no part of Sir
William's Memorial could require to be more attended to, than what related to
the defence and protection of the kingdom from these two foes ; immediately,
therefore, on the Queen's accession, orders were sent out to the Vice-Admiral to
keep the sea, and watch Calais ; the state of the ordnance in the Tower was
diligently inquired into, as well as the state of Portsmouth and the other strong
places on the coast.
But the actual degree of danger may be best understood, as well as the
means of providing against it, from a paper drawn up by Secretary
Cecil, after his accustomed manner, as a guide to the Council, upon a pretty
seems rather to have been sent on a special embassy to Philip. Lastly, Lord Burghley's own
notes in Murdin, shew not only that Lord Arundel was there, or supposed to be there, with the
Bishop of Ely and Dr. Wotton, at the period of the Queen's accession, but that Lord Howard
was dispatched thither as a commissioner, to join them at Cercamp on the 14th of December.
Dr. Lingard says, Lord Arundel came home on Mary's death, and this is the exact truth; as may
be seen by the instructions given to the Lord Howard of Effingham, and printed in Forbes,
vol. i. p. 36 ; so that, though Lord Arundel was one of the original commissioners, his unexpected
return gave occasion to the sending of Lord Howard.
*As to Karne's notification of her accession to the Pope, Dr. Lingard writes, " His ear, (i.e.
the Pope's) had been preoccupied by the diligence of the French Ambassador, who suggested that
to admit the succession of Elizabeth, would be to approve the pretended marriage of her parents,
Henry VIIT. and Anne Boleyn ; to annul the decisions of Clement VII. and Paul III.; to pre-
judge the claim of the true and legitimate heir, Mary Queen of Scots ; and to offend the King of
France, who had determined to support the right of his daughter-in-law with all the power of his
realm. The Pope therefore told Karne plainly, that he was unable to comprehend the hereditary
right of one who was not born in lawful wedlock." Dr. L. has not added, but which seems to be
quite true, thatthe Pope indignantly observed, that Elizabeth had been very bold to take the Crown
and name of Queen without his leave, in a kingdom holden mfee of the Church. Turitv's History of
the Council of Trent ; Die. Historique, art. Paul IV. The Abbe Millot's observation upon this is
" On s'imagine £tre au siecle du Roi Jean et d' Innocent III."
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 27
general belief and opinion, that France contemplated no less than the
conquest of England this very year. " First," he argues, " they would not
defer it because of the doubt of the Queen (of Scots') life. Secondly, they
had now got an occasion to conquer Scotland, and had already men of war
there, and prepared a great army both out of France and Almain. Their
captains were appointed ; their victuals provided ; their ships in rigging.
Thirdly, they reckoned within a month to have their wills in Scotland.
Fourthly, that done, it seemed most likely they would prosecute their pretence
against England ; which had no fort but Berwick to stay them, and that was
imperfect, and would be these two years' day. Fifthly, if they offered battle
with Almains, there was great doubt how England would be able to sustain
it ; both for lack of good generals and great captains ; and principally for
lack of people, considering the waste that had lately been by sickness and
death these three last years ; again, if it were defended with strangers, the
entertainment would be so chargeable in respect of money, and so hurtful
to the realm, as it could not be borne." These questions were then pro-
pounded. First, what to do ; next, whether it were better to impeach the
enemy in Scotland, now in the beginning, before their army were come ;
and so to take away their landing places : or to permit them therein, and to
provide for the defence of the realm.
The course suggested to be taken was principally this. "First, that the
Queen's Majesty did with speed send to King Philip to understand his mind,
and to obtain his friendship.' Item, that one be sent to the King of Denmark?
to stay him, and to cause him to doubt of the French. Item, to send to
the Princes of Almain. Item, to provide all manner of ways for money,
armour, &c. Item, to send to the French King, to declare to him what occasions
the Queen hath to doubt of his proceedings ; and therefore, to let him know
her purpose of defence, and that if his proceedings increased as they were
begun her Majesty must needs proceed to prevent the dangers."
And upon this it was moved (we follow Strype), that Sir Nicholas Throg-
morton should be dispatched to France.*
* This was the same who underwent the extraordinary trial we have spoken of, in the last
reign, for a concern in Wyat's insurrection, and who had nobly and generously withstood the
attempts that were made, to implicate, through his evidence, the Princess Elizabeth and the
Earl of Devonshire. His trial, which is to be seen at length in Holinshed, is allowedly one of
the most interesting documents of that nature, extant.
28 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
This beginning of things is sufficient to shew, as in former instances, where
the greatest danger lay, and how entirely necessary it was, in the very first
instance, to direct the views of the Council and Government towards Scot-
land, as the " stepping stone" of France ;* to find some pretence for keeping
a fleet in those parts, to hinder the landing of fresh succours, which were known
to be ready to be sent from French ports, for the purpose, first, of bringing
Scotland into subjection to the will of France, and then invading England — and
with what intent ? no doubt, to set Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne,
depose Elizabeth, maintain the Catholic Religion, and reduce the whole island
of Britain to a state of abject dependence on France. To protect his Sovereign
and his country from these fatal calamities, we do very confidently believe to
have been the end and scope of all Lord Burghley's practices in regard to
Scotland ; and, we have the more reason to dwell upon it here, because his
great care has been misconstrued and misrepresented to so great a degree, as
to be referred entirely to a rooted malignity of heart, altogether incredible, and
extending in its consequences through a series of many years. We shall be
under the necessity of telling a long story, one which, if we could suppose that
any unprejudiced readers would regard it as altogether a digression from the
work we have in hand, we should very gladly omit.
Mr. Chalmers, in his History of Mary Queen of Scots, conceives that he has
discovered proofs of Cecil's inveterate disposition to work her individual ruin,
by his mode of collecting charges against her, from the first moment that he was
called to power under Elizabeth ; and that he was busy (" very frequent," is
Mr. Chalmers's expression), in " noticing transgressions on her part, for the
obvious purpose of constant recollection :" and he would insinuate that he began
almost before any offence could be given, f
* " She received the kingdom at the hand of her sister, entangled (I will not say oppressed)
with foreign wars : the French on one side, and the Scots on the other ; which, sucking out of
their ancestors' poisoned breasts immortal and deadly hatred against this realm, lay in wait like
thieves to invade and spoil it." — Aylmers Harborough for faithful subjects, £fc. — A coarse and inele-
gant, but certainly, a very true description. What passed in Henry and Edward's days, as related
in our first volume, seemed now about to be revenged upon England, by advancing Mary's
claim to the throne, against Elizabeth, and invading the latter country by way of Scotland.
t The state of things is thus given. Mr. Chalmers observes, that there was published at
Paris, in 1548 (it should be 1558), a declaration of the triumphant marriage of the two most
noble Prince and Princess, Francis de Valois, and Mary Stuart, by the Grace of God, King and
Queen of Scotland, and Dauphin and Dauphiness of France. " We may thus perceive," says
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 29
The case is this — In the notes on Queen Elizabeth's reign, by the Lord Trea-
surer Burghley, to be found in Murdin's Collections of Papers at Hatfield-
House, we find these entries :
"Jan. 16. (that is, 1558-9) the Dolphin of France and his Wife Queen of
Scotts did, by the style of King and Queen of Scotland, England and Ireland,
graunt to the Lord Fleming certen things, &c.
" June 28, (1559) the justs at Paris, wherein the King Dolphins two Heralds
were appareld with the arms of England and Scotland.
"July 11, (1559) this day consultation for the French Kings stile and arms
for England to be joined with France.
" July 16. Ushers going before the Queen of Scotts (being now the French
Queen)* to the Chappell, cry, Place pour la Heine d' Angleterre.
Mr. Chalmers, " that the, assumption of the titles of England, which was never forgiven, must have
taken place somewhat later. It was on the 16th of January, 1558-9, that Cecil took notice in his
Diary, for the first time, that the Dauphin and Dauphiness did grant something to Lord Fleming,
by the style of King and Queen of Scotland, England, and Ireland." All this is very true, pro-
bably, but it only makes the case the stronger in favour of Cecil. Mary was married on the 24th
day of April, 1558; yef, as he truly says, there appears to have been then no assumption of the
titles of England: but, according to Lord Burghley, on the 16th of January, 1558-9, there was ;
that is, just two months, and no more, after Mary of England's death and Elizabeth's accession:
Can we doubt, therefore, whether the first assumption of those titles was not in direct opposition
to Elizabeth, to her Protestant principles, and in token of a distrust of the validity of her title to
the English Crown ? — Nothing, we think, could have been more obvious ; and Cecil's memo-
randum, therefore, bespeaks his discernment, and attention to the danger of Elizabeth, under a
disputed title. The* French meddled not with Mary's title, though the Queen of Scots had just
as strong claims against her, on the ground of a parliamentary exclusion in her father's reign.
When put, afterwards, into the line of succession by Henry's will, Elizabeth was restored also, as
equally the King's daughter, the two divorces remaining as they were. All these things made the
assumption of the arms a direct insult to Elizabeth ; it was impossible to regard it as any thing less.
Not that this was, after all, the first step taken towards her exclusion: we know, from the letters
that passed, and are preserved, between Henry II. and Antoine de Noailles, his ambassador here
in 1553, that as soon as ever Katherine's divorce was repealed by Parliament, and Mary again
legitimated, Henry regarded it as so direct a bastardy of Elizabeth, as to put Mary Queen of
Scots next in the line of inheritance. And, therefore, it is very wisely observed by Vertot, in a
note upon the passage, " Cette pretention causa depuis tous les malheurs de cette infortunee
Princesse." What could the assumption of the arms then in 1558 be, but a direct renewal of this
pretension, not by "ushers and poets," but by Kings and Ministers? — Negotiations deNoailles,u. 250.
* July 26th, tidings came to London that the young French King had proclaimed himself King
of France, Scotland, and England. — Strype's Annals, i. 289.
30 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
" July 27. The armes of the Scot. Queen was set upon certeyn arches at the
marriadge solemnized for the King of Spain, with the French Kings daughter,
with the armes of England, with these verses underneath in Scottish :
" The armes of Mary Queen Dolphin of France,
The noblest Lady on Earth for till avance,
Of Scotland Queen and England too,
Of Ireland too, as God has provided so.*
" Nov. In this month the Queen of Scotts made her entry into Chattelleraut,
where her stile was published as Queen of England, where four verses were
made, whereof the two last were :
" Nunc Gallos totoque remotes orb* Britannos,
Unum Dos Mariee cogit in Imperium."
Here are altogether six entries in the course of one year, and that the first of
the Queen's reign ; a good many certainly for the mere purpose of recollection,!
and that recollection kept up and encouraged with no other view than to work
the ruin, in time, of a young woman of only sixteen years of age ; to which end,
we are to suppose, he was " eager to collect against her matters of charge,"
though she was at the same moment "admired in France for the principles of
her heart, and the qualities of her head." And, adds the same author, " it was
not, it seems, inquired how far the Scottisli Queen partook in the impertinences
* The arms were borne Baron and Fcmme. In the first was the coat of the Dauphin of France,
which took up the upper part of the shield : the lower half contained the arms of Scotland. This
impaled quarterly. 1. The arms of Scotland. 2. The arms of England. The 3d. as the 2d. The
4th as the 1st. Over all, half an escutcheon of pretence of England; the sinister half being, as »'*
were, obscured or cut off". " Perhaps so given," says Strype, " to denote that another (and who
should that be but Queen Elizabeth), had gotten possession of the Crown in her prejudice. One
of these escutcheons being brought out of France and delivered to the Duke of Norfolk, Earl
Marshal, he referred it to the heralds, who found the same to be "prejudicial to the Queen's
Majesty, her state, and dignity." Their decision may be seen in Strype's Annals, i. p. 12.
" Hence," says Camden, p. 34. " flowed, as from a fountain, all the calamities wherein she (Mary)
was afterwards wrapped." — It was absurd to pretend that the arms were now assumed merely to
denote the affinity. Mary's father, who was nearer to the Crown of England, never* bore them;
(Forbes, i. 350.) nor Mary herself, while the sister of Elizabeth reigned.
t In the despatches from Killegrew and Jones, (Blois, 29th November, 1559) addressed to the
Queen, and to be seen in Forbes, i. 266, &c. a more particular account of these things may
be read.
1659.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 31
of ushers, or in the imprudence of poets, when those offerings were made at the
shrine of Vanity."*
Can this be called writing history ? We should scarcely have thought it
possible that any man in his senses could suppose, that at so momentous a
period, so eminent a statesman as Sir William Cecil, should record such trans-
actions, if by any construction they could be regarded as merely arising out
of the impertinencies of ushers, or the imprudence of poets, making offerings
at the shrine of Vanity. We can forgive any writer for deploring the unhappy
end of Mary Queen of Scots, but to fix upon such memorandums as we have
cited, as indelible proofs of a malignity of heart in Lord Burghley,^ tending
to her destruction (as many as 30 years afterwards), is in itself little less than a
proof of a prejudice altogether as malignant, against Lord Burghley, on the part
of the historian. J And yet thus have the minds of readers generally been pre-
* It is asserted in the paper entitled Responsio ad Petitioner D. Glasion, <5fc., drawn up by
Cecil, that Mary called herself Queen of England and Ireland, and denied Elizabeth's right. — See
Forbes, vol. i. 404. (20.) This is one of the best papers upon the subject, extant. But, of Mr.
Chalmers' idea of Elizabeth's right, we may form a good idea, from his remarks on the treaty
of Edinburgh, to be spoken of hereafter ; where he plainly alleges that the recital of that treaty,
affirming that the kingdoms of England and Ireland did, by right, pertain to Elizabeth, threw the
Scottish Queen too much in the wrong when she assumed the title of Queen of England and
Ireland.
+ We do not wish to speak rudely of Mr. Chalmers, but it seems a point of indispensable
necessity, to caution the reader of a life of Lord Burghley, against what the author of the Bio-
graphica Britannica calls that " literary Quixotism," which has been manifested within our own
memory, in defence of the character of Mary, at the expense of Elizabeth and her ministers;
particularly Lord Burghley, as the text may shew. — See Biog. Brit. art. Buchanan, note 5.
Mr. Hallam, in his Constitutional History of England, sub Reg. Elizabeth, writes, " We may
well avoid the tedious and intricate paths of Scottish history, where each fact must be sustained
by a controversial discussion." Happy should we be if we could say the same, but there is
scarcely one controverted fact of that perplexed history, in which as well the private character
as the public fame of the great man whose life we are writing, is not deeply implicated.
t It is astonishing how this author is bent upon vilifying Elizabeth and Cecil in almost every
page of his work, but especially the latter. In the eyes of Mr. Chalmers, all his wisdom was
wickedness ; his whole policy, perfidy and deceit ; his acts atrocious, his heart malignant, and
all his designs fraught with mischief. Had we felt that in undertaking this work, we should
have nothing to do but to wash such a blackmoor white (to use a vulgar but very significant
expression) we should have turned from it in disgust ; but when we had looked thoroughly into
the character of the times in which Cecil lived, and considered whom and what he had to defend,
we discovered so much wicked wisdom, so much perfidy and deceit, such atrocious, malignant,
32 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
occupied against Elizabeth and her counsellors, by the advocates of the unhappy
Queen of Scots. In the posture of affairs, to which Lord Burghley's attention
must have been directed, during the first twelve months of Elizabeth's reign,
perhaps nothing could be of more importance, than the very transactions
to which he refers. But why ? not surely because he was maliciously jealous
of the homage paid to a young princess of sixteen, by gentlemen ushers and
fawning poets, but because in those transactions, he saw as plainly as possible,
a design on the part of the French Court, or of the Guises at least, to dispute
at once the validity of Elizabeth's title to the Crown ; to prepossess the minds
of the French, the English, and the Scotch, with a notion that Mary was the
rightful heir to the throne of England, which in truth she might seem to be
through her grandmother, if Elizabeth were illegitimate, and any parliament
could be collected to repeal the act enabling Henry to dispose of. the succession
by will. Both Elizabeth and Mary had been bastardized by parliament ; but
the Catholics had prevailed in the late reign to set aside the bastardy of
Mary ; thereby leaving Elizabeth no right by blood. Another parliament
by the influence of Protestants, might have just as great a right to replace
Elizabeth where she stood, as long as Henry's union with Katherine of Aragon
remained cancelled, that is, as through her father, next in blood to Edward,
and having once had that right, she was justified in resorting to it, as a title,
which neither her father's caprice, nor his compliant parliaments, could totally
annihilate.
We have already taken some pains to shew this, and shall only therefore
add, that Cecil must have known how necessary it was, immediately to resent
such claims, backed, as they now were, by France, having Scotland on its
side ; he must have known how common it had been with the English Mary,
when her sister was under a cloud, to taunt her with her illegitimacy, and
rudely to remind her that Mary of Scotland ought to succeed herself ; he must
and mischievous designs, constantly directed against England and its Sovereign, that had we found
nothing better to say of Cecil, than that he was, in all the above particulars, a match for his
opponents, we should have proceeded very confidently with our history; but, for suck times, and
considering what ought to have been, and what were, the constant objects of his care and
attention, we have no hesitation in saying, that his wisdom was consummate, his policy most
skilful, his designs always directed to the preventing or frustration of mischief incessantly
threatening the peace and happiness of England, the surety of its Sovereign, and the permanent
establishment of the Protestant Religion.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 33
have known, for it was not long concealed, that France was at work with the
Pope to dethrone Elizabeth as a bastard, by the thunders of the Vatican, and
advance Mary directly to the English throne.* All these things he must
have known ; and was he to suppose, that it was only through the forwardness
of some underlings of the French Court, or the sycophancy of some imprudent
poets, that Mary, the Dauphin's wife, and Queen of Scotland, had been
publicly decorated with the additional titles, and the proper armorial insignia
of a Queen of England and Ireland ? In the eye of a discerning statesman,
the designs of the French, and of the Catholics every where, could not possibly
have been more significantly displayed, than in the assumption of the title
and arms of Queen of England and Ireland by Mary, at the moment of
Elizabeth's accession.^ To the latter it was not only an insult and affront,
but a threat ; and it would have been little less than treason in a Minister so
acquainted with the state of France and Scotland as Cecil was, to overlook it ;
" but, if it seems," as Mr. Chalmers says, " not to have been inquired how far
the Scottish Queen partook in the impertinence of ushers, or in the imprudence of
poets," it seems to have been duly understood by Elizabeth's attentive Minister,
how much the Scottish Queen was at this time under the control of the French
Court, or House of Lorrain ; and how much evil they meditated towards England,
through Scotland. J It is absurd to attempt to put any other construction upon the
entries, of which we have been unwillingly induced to say so much, in conse-
quence of the very perverse construction that has been put upon them by others.
Though no interruptions took place in regard to the negotiations for peace,
* The Pope himself, Paul IV., in declaring that he could not rescind the decrees of his
predecessors, Clement VII. and Paul III., who had declared her incapable of succeeding, left
no room to doubt of the aspect of things at Rome ; but Elizabeth was soon rid of this great
enemy, as he died in the first year of her reign, Aug. 18, 1559, in the 90th year of his age : his
last advice to the Cardinals was, to multiply the courts of Inquisition, as the only means of
preserving the Church. — Jurieu. Great rejoicings were made at Rome on his death. — See
Forbes, i. 234, or Turner's Modern History, i. 555..
t The mere assumption of the arms, without any other implied pretensions against the actual
occupier of the English throne, might indeed have been overlooked, perhaps, as a mere piece of
family pride, since Mary's own mother of the House of Lorrain, bore for arms, we are told, six
pieces ; viz. I. Hungary ; II. Navarre ; III. Jerusalem ; IV. Anjou ; V. Barr ; VI. Lorrain.
— See Sandford's Royal Genealogies. But James, Mary's father, never having quartered the
English arms, as we have shewn, rendered the case a direct affront to Elizabeth.
I See Throckmorton's Letters to Cecil in Forbes, and the extracts from them in Turner's
Modern History, reign of Elizabeth, i. 555-6.
VOL. II. F
34 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1659.
yet every care was taken to strengthen the places most exposed to the attacks,
either of France or Scotland ; as Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, Dover and
the Cinque Ports, Wales, Guernsey, Ireland, but particularly Berwick and the
marches towards Scotland ; and as the Treasury was ve^y low, and unprepared
for any very expensive measures of defence, many modes of raising money
were resorted to, more adapted to the emergencies of the moment, than upon
any settled plan of finance, except by the strong hint they conveyed to the
fiscal officers of every description, that they had now got a Sovereign and
a Minister, who would not overlook any defalcations of the public revenue,
or any blots in their accounts. Arrears were called in with great strictness,
and Commissioners appointed to take account of all monies owing to the
Crown, on various occasions, and from different persons and places : Sir Thomas
Gresham also, the careful agent of former Sovereigns, was sent to borrow money
at Antwerp on city bonds : great endeavours, in the mean while, were made
to keep things quiet with regard to religion. The public mind was naturally
in a state of great agitation upon these points. The Romanist anxious to keep
things upon the footing Mary left them, yet dreadfully distrustful of the
Queen and her Council ; while the Reformed party, too eager to evince the
sense they had of their recovered liberty (for the Queen had already set many
prisoners free), made too hasty and violent attacks upon the churches, and every
symbol they could find of Popery, that had been restored in the last reign. Some
restraints therefore, according to the twelfth article of the Secretary's celebrated
memorial, were put upon preachers : the pulpits, in such moments of agitation
and alarm, being too generally abused by both parties, to the purposes of strife
and contention. Sermons were allowed to be preached before the Court, and
the selection of such preachers, gave but too much reason to the Romanists to
conclude, that the new reign would not be propitious to their wishes : in other
places, notwithstanding the inhibitions of Government, many rash and indiscreet
discourses were delivered, to the great disturbance of the public peace. In
the mean while, the great cause of religion was in no manner overlooked by
Elizabeth or her advisers. As soon, even, as her first Council was appointed,
she has the credit given her, of having selected a certain number out of the
whole body, to concert measures for retrieving the cause of the Reformation,
and bringing things back to the state in which they had been left by her brother,
Edward VI. ; but before we proceed to take account of their plans, we must
advert to the meeting of Parliament.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 35
It had been summoned for the 23d, but, on account of the Queen's being ill,
did not meet till the 25th of January, 1 558-9, when it was opened by the Lord
Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon,* with a speech of considerable length, ("a most ex-
cellent and solid speech," says the author of the Biographia Britannica,) delivered
in the presence of the Queen, and in which we find such authentic notices of
the actual state of things, as to demand our attention; though having already
touched upon these points, we need not transcribe it at length. f After declaring
the Queen's will to be, that in all cases, even such as " might by means, be reformed
without Parliament," that great national assembly should be consulted; and that,
" at this time particularly, she meant not to make any resolutions in any matter
of weight, before it should be, by both houses, sufficiently and fully debated,
examined and considered :" he proceeds to touch upon such points as seemed
most immediately to demand their attention ; as first, the care of religion, or " the
* The purity of this Parliament having been called in question by Catholic writers, and
attributed specially to the arts of Cecil, (See Cobbett's Parliamentary History, 648.) it may not be,
amiss to observe, that nothing was done as to the choice and nomination of members, that had not,
under different circumstances, been practised by Mary. Many Popish magistrates were removed,
and such put in their places, as were 'likely to influence the return of Protestant members. It was
done to counteract an adverse interest and party, which had already evinced a disposition to act
in a similar manner : indeed, in another instance (the device for altering the religion, of which
we shall sooti have to speak), it is expressly suggested, that only those means shall be resorted
to, that Queen Mary had adopted on a similar occasion. [Strype, dnnals, i. p. 11. 396.] The
times were revolutionary, all Europe over; and whatever one party did, the other could not but
also do, or attempt to do. Upon any change of situation — upon a mere change of ministers,
such things may be said to be done to this day ; and if it be intended to promote any great
good, or ward off any great evil, as is generally the ostensible reason, the returns to Parliament
must be looked to: perhaps, the only real difference is, that the Sovereign is not brought forward
to bear a part in these party negotiations, as was notoriously the case in former days ; [See Hallam's
Constitutional History of England, i. 48.] but this indecency removed, a minister cannot be
expected to put himself at the head of affairs, without some confidence in the support of the
Parliament, to which he may have to submit his measures. In the times of which we are
writing, one inquiry or one provision, might seem to include all the rest, — Catholic or Anti-
Catholic, was the great question to be asked. The open manner in which the interference was
carried on, was proof enough, that the " arts of Cecil," were rather the avowed practices of
the times, than any unconstitutional arts of his own. The Tudor Parliaments in general, do not
seem to have required much art, to bring them into compliance with the Courts: still however,
as Mr. Hallam remarks, the care taken to procure favourable elections, shews the increased weight
of the Commons, or lower House of Parliament.
t It is printed at length in D'Ewes, and in the Biographia Britannica.
36 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
well making of laws for the according and uniting of the people of the realm,
into an uniform order of religion ;" secondly, " for the reforming and removing
of all enormities and mischiefs, that might hurt or hinder the civil orders or
policies of the realm ;" and thirdly, " deeply and advisedly to weigh and
consider the estate and condition of the realm, and the losses and decays that
had happened of late to the imperial Crown thereof, and devise the best
remedies to supply and relieve the same." In the agitation of the questions
concerning religion, he admonished them carefully to avoid " all sophistical,
captious, and frivolous arguments and quiddities, meeter for ostentation of wit,
than consultation of weighty matters, comelier for scholars than counsellors,"
and studiously to abstain from " all contumelious and opprobrious words ; as
heretic, schismatic, papists, and such like names :" in which it will be seen, that
in the former advice, there was an evident reference to the jargon of the schools,
hitherto so much in vogue amongst the Romanists, and whereby men's minds
were in danger of being bewildered and perplexed ; and in the latter, view
was had to the peace of all parties : the terms " heretics and schismatics,"
being as common in the mouths of Romanists, as directed against the friends
of the Reformation, as the term Papist, in the mouths of the latter. All was
to be directed, according to the Lord Keeper's advice, " to the honour and
glory of God, to the establishment of the Church, and to the tranquillity of
the realm." He wished, says Rapin, to have them steer their "course between
superstition and irreligion, which might re-unite the adherents of both religions
in the same public worship :" a remark of some importance from the pen of
a writer of his principles.
In regard to civil matters, a general review of the existing laws was recom-
mended, particularly as to their sufficiency to repress enormities, and account to
be taken " whether any laws be too severe or too sharp, or too soft and too gentle ;
and the inclination and disposition of the people to be considered."
The general aspect of things, he remarked, was such as might administer
to the mind of every true Englishman, comfort and discomfort, joy and
sadness. Comfort, from the consideration of the virtues and qualifications
of the new Queen, " to whom nothing under the sun, was so dear, as the
hearty love, and good-will of her nobles and subjects, nothing so odible, as
what might cause, or procure the contrary;" discomfort, from a view of "the
great decays and losses of honour, strength, and treasure, which had happened
to the Imperial Crown ;" particularly, in the surrender to the enemy of Calais,
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 37
and other Continental possessions ; with the waste of revenue, loss of munition
and artillery, of many valuable lives, and the exposure of our trade and mer-
chandise for want of a navy, sufficient havens, and frontier garrisons.
The reparation of these great losses, and other matters, as they would greatly
impede her Majesty's liberality towards her subjects, so would they call for
expenses, much to be regretted ; but he added in conclusion, " Her Majesties
will and pleasure is, that nothing shall be demanded or required of her loving
subjects, but that, which they of their own free-will and liberalities be well
contented, readily and gladly, frankly and freely to offer." * One thing he judi-
ciously introduced in manifest allusion to Mary's assistance of Philip in his
foreign wars, which, by its ill success, had so greatly disquieted the people :
" she was a Princess," he observed, " that never meant nor intended, for any
private affection, to advance the cause or quarrel [of another] with any foreign
Prince or Potentate to the destruction of her own subjects. "f
From the view that has now been taken of the state of the nation at the
period of Elizabeth's accession, we must surely be brought to the conclusion,
that it could be no ordinary, certainly no vain or wanton, ambition, that could
induce the great statesman whose life we are recording, to place himself in a
situation of such notorious difficulty and danger. Every thing so out of order at
home, as to encourage the boldest attempts of foreign enemies, if not actually
invite their attacks; an immediate competitor for the crown, close at hand, the
Queen of one portion of the very island so exposed to attack, a princess of the
Romish Religion, on the eve of being Queen of France also, closely related to a
powerful family there, bigoted in their attachment to the Church of Rome, and
in their opposition to all who had hitherto manifested a disposition to cast off
her yoke ; and finally, the Pope, ready with his bulls and anathemas to bastardize
whom he chose, to cancel any tie, dissolve any obligation, dispense with any oath,
that might be held, by his Catholic subjects and adherents, to stand in the way
of their projects and endeavours, to hinder the progress of the Reformation, and
* See what regard was shewn to the wants of the nation by the Parliament. — Strype's Annals,
89. — Subsidy granted and levied by commission.
t We observe, that in this Parliament a place was assigned within the bar of the House of
Lords, not only for the Lord Keeper being under the degree of a Baron, but for the Queen's chief
Secretary being a Knight. The seats so appropriated, were at the uppermost part of the Wool-
sack, in the midst of the House, except that when the Queen was present, the Lord Keeper stood
behind the Cloth of Estate.— D'Ewes, p. 10.
38 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY, [1559.
root out heresy. And yet in the face of all these dangers, the case was made a
case of conscience and principle ; of attachment to the cause of the Reformation,
and the liberties of the people as connected therewith. For, as Bishop
Carleton observes in his 'Thankful Remembrance,' " If she (the Queen) would
have admitted the Popish Religion, then might all these difficulties have been
removed ; but establishing the Gospell shee understood, with that shee drew all
these troubles upon her own head ; yet, she gave the Glory to God, and in
hope of God's holy protection, she established God's Holy Truth." What is
said of the Queen, applies more strongly, if possible, to her great Minister. In
addition to the above, we cannot help copying the following remarks of the
o-reat Lord Bacon, Lord Burghley's near relative, for though his praise is given
T:o the Queen, it must also be held to reach to her intrepid adviser : " For
contempt of peril, see a lady, that cometh to a crown after the experience of
some adverse fortune, which for the most part extenuateth the mind, and
maketh it apprehensive of fear. No sooner she taketh the sceptre into her
sacred hands, but she putteth on a resolution to make the greatest, the most
important, the most dangerous, that can be in a state, the alteration of religion.
This she doth, not after a sovereignty established and continued by sundry
years, when custom might have bred in her people a more absolute obedience ;
when the reputation of her policy and virtue might have made her government
redoubled, but at the very entrance of her reign, when she was green in her
authority, her servants scant known to her, the adverse part not weakened,
her own part not confirmed." In truth, but one servant will appear to have
been so well known to her as to account for the conduct she pursued. The
same author indeed, observes elsewhere, " It was no small fortune, to find at her
entrance, some such servants or counsellors, as she then found ;" his own father
indeed was second only to Cecil. But Lord Bacon proceeds, " Neither doth
she reduce or re-unite her realm to the religion of the states about her, that the
evil inclination of the subject might be countervailed by the good correspond-
ence in foreign parts ; but contrariwise, she introduceth a religion exterminated
and persecuted both at home and abroad ; her proceeding herein is not by
degrees and by stealth, but absolute and at once. Was she encouraged thereto
by the strength she found in leagues and alliances with great and potent confe-
derates? No, but she found her realm in wars with her nearest and mightiest
neighbours. She stood single and alone, and in league only with one, that
after the people of her nation had made his wars, left her to make her own
1559] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 39
peace. Yet notwithstanding the opposition so great, the support so weak, the
season so improper ; yet I say, because it was a religion wherein she was
nourished and brought up : a religion that freed her subjects from pretence of
foreign powers, and indeed the true religion ; she brought to pass this great
work with success worthy so noble a resolution."* — -Bacon's Discourse in praise
of his Sovereign. It required not only a cool head, and a practised judgment,
but a most undaunted spirit, to undertake the defence of the nation at such a
period, and uphold a Sovereign, whose title was in so many ways open to
attack, and who could only defend herself by the choice of wise Counsellors
and the attachment of her people.
One defence indeed against France and Scotland was proffered to her, but
which, in the midst of all her difficulties, she had the resolution to decline.
This was the hand of Philip, her late sister's husband ; a suitor, to whom she
had been taught to think herself personally obliged for her liberty, if not for
her life ; and whose alliance, even if she did not marry him, was at this time
almost essential to her preservation, and the security of her Crown. It was
through his ambassador, the Conde de Feria, that Philip made these overtures,
who was endeavouring besides, all he could, to impress the English Catholics
with an idea, that nothing but such an union, could preserve to them their
religion ;f we may easily conclude, that all the Queen's Protestant subjects,
must for the very same reasons, have been just as much against it ; besides the
experience the nation in general had acquired during the last reign, of the
woful consequences of so close a connexion with the bigoted court of Spain.
The French also could not be expected to have their eyes shut to the conse-
quences of such a match, as regarded their views both upon Scotland and
England ; and therefore, as the marriage could not take place without a papal
dispensation, which Philip had proposed to obtain, the French Court entered
at once into negotiations at Rome to hinder such a process.
But Elizabeth herself had great reasons to decline the proposal, however
advantageous it might have been to her in other respects ; had she allowed
* " She feared not," says one who knew her well, " all the potentates of the world."
t The Conde de Feria (or Due de Feria, as some call him) enlarged much upon the depressed
state of the kingdom, and the difficulties of Elizabeth's situation, unless she should consent to
marry Philip. He represented the kingdom to be, according to Mademoiselle Keralio, " depourvue
de garnisons, de troupes, de fortifications, de munitions de guerre, et d' HOMMES d' ETAT ;" for-
tunately for Elizabeth, the latter was not the case.
40 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
Philip to apply to Rome for a dispensation to marry her sister's widower, it
must have amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that the papal dispensation
granted to her father to marry his brother's widow, was valid, and in so doing
she must, by her own act, have bastardised herself ; while to submit in any
manner to such an act of supremacy on the part of the Pope, could not be less
than to abandon her own supremacy, which she was about to resume, and
greatly weaken the cause of Protestantism in her kingdom. Fortunately,
Philip himself stood in need of England as an ally against France and
Scotland, so that with fair words, and a due show of respect and civility, she
was able to dismiss this powerful and important suitor, without any immediate
detriment to her affairs, if we except this one circumstance, that in the negotia-
tions for peace which were going forward, and by which Philip was in all
honour bound, if he could, to recover Calais to England, which had been
sacrificed to his politics, he became remiss as to that article, and it was obliged
to be left in the possession of France.*
* The marriage of Elizabeth would certainly have been an event of great importance to the
nation, in checking competitors, and establishing her throne, upon a footing of foreign alliance;
needful in some quarter, to withstand the assaults of her powerful enemies, in France, Scotland,
and at Rome. It was in the first year of her reign therefore, that she was addressed by her
Parliament to marry, but without effect. She was married already to her people, she told them,
and could be contented to have it inscribed on her tomb, Here lies a Virgin Queen. Suitors
however, were not wanting, her hand was solicited by the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, and
by some of her own subjects; or if not actually solicited by the latter, yet there were some, who,
it is thought, might have been welcome suitors. Besides the Master of the Horse, Lord Robert
Dudley, Sir William Pickering has the credit of being a favourite at this time. — See Jewel's Letters
to Peter Martyr, in Burnet, vol. iii. and Aikins Court of Elizabeth. But Cecil appears to have
been anxious rather to countenance a proffered connexion with the Imperial Court, through the
Archduke Charles, the son of the Emperor Ferdinand, and brother to the King of Bohemia, a
Prince of excellent qualities, and judged to be favourably inclined towards the Reformation.
Burnet says, " known to be a Protestant," and indeed such accounts seem to have been commu-
nicated to the English agent Mount, by no less personages than the Elector Palatine and the
Duke of Wirtemberg. But Cecil could not succeed in this as he wished, much however passed
upon the subject both at home and in Germany. The Emperor professed not to wish to interfere
with Philip, being so near a relative, but to offer one of his own sons, should the latter not be
accepted. Whatever might be the private sentiments of the Archduke, the Emperor plainly
intended to give support to the Catholic Religion, on which very account the Queen has the
the credit given her of declining the offer. It is curious, that after being himself rejected,
Philip should become a suitor for his German relative the Archduke; he even wrote a long
J-atm letter to Elizabeth, to be seen in Haynes, in which he assures her, " Nihil in prxsentia nobis
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 41
Camden, Rapin, and other writers, suppose, that it was Philip's proposal
which hastened the Queen's measures to effect another change in religion, and
reduce things to the state in which they were left, by her brother King Edward,
imagining that this once effected would put an end to Philip's importunity. But,
she appears to have required no hastening ; she was only slow in order to be the
more sure ; Bishop Aylmer, in his famous book before referred to, entitled, " an
Harborough for faithful subjects," gives her, and consequently her Council, credit
for attending to the maxim of Seneca, " Velox consilium sequitur pcenitentia" that
repentance was sure to follow that counsel which was taken too speedily ; and
therefore he adds, she walked wisely, as one of God's chosen instruments, by using
correction without severity, by seeking the lost with clemency, by governing
wisely without fury, by weighing and judging without rashness, by purging evil
humours with deliberation ; and to conclude, in doing her duty without affection.*
We have already noticed that on the first formation of her Council, some
select persons, either of their own will or by the Queen's appointment, applied
themselves to consider the state of religion ; and are supposed to have very early
entered into deliberations upon the subject; though secretly, and with a prudent
regard to the feverish state of the public mind. About the beginning of De-
cember indeed, which must have been within a month of the Queen's accession
and Mary's demise, " a device," Strype tells us, " was drawn up by some notable
hand, and offered to Secretary Cecyl, and which by the steps afterwards taken
appeared to have been followed ; by whose pen it was writ," he goes on to say,
" doth not appear. I suspect it to have been either John Hales, a man of a
politic and working head, and a zealous Protestant, and Clerk of the Hanaper
to the Queen, as he had been to King Edward VI., or Sir Thomas Smith, a very
cvenire posset gratius, nihilque magis stadium nostrum erga serenitatem vestram et ipsius regni ampli-
tudinem, sccenderet," — in fact, he wished to keep England in his own family, at all events. — See
Lord Montague's account of his conversation with Gasper Preynor, the Emperor's envoy, interlined
by Cecil.— Haynes, 233, see also Lord Burghley's notes in Murdin, May and June, 1559.
*The following passage from Lloyd's Worthies, is too applicable to the beginning of Elizabeth's
reign to be omitted. " He," (Sir Ralph Sadler) " learned in King Henry VIII.'s time, as Crom-
well's instrument, what he must advise (in point of religion) in Queen Elizabeth's time, as an
eminent counsellor. His maxim being this, that zeal was the duty of a private breast, and mode-
ration the interest of a public state. The Protestants, Sir Ralph's conscience would have in the
commencement of Queen Elizabeth kept in hope ; the Papists, his prudence would not have cast
into despair. It was a maxim at that time in another case, that France should not presume, nor
Spain be desperate."~-Vo\. i. 107.
VOL.11. G
42 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
wise man, and Secretary of State to King Edward, and I am rather inclined to
think it the latter."*
" In which device," for we cannot do better than copy Strype as far as it may
be necessary, " are these questions, with practical apt answers to them. I. When
the alteration shall be first attempted? The answer to which 'is, at the next
Parliament. II. What danger may ensue upon the alteration? The answer to
which weighs the danger from the Bishop of Rome, from the French King, from
Scotland, from Ireland, and from many people here at home. III. What remedy
for these matters? Distinct answers, as France, Rome, &c. IV. What the manner
of doing it ? The answer propounds certain learned men to contrive, and bring
in a book, or platform of religion ready drawn to the Queen ; and having her
approbation, to be put into the Parliament House."| We cannot follow this
learned and diligent writer through all the questions and answers given, but
shall only observe that the learned persons selected, were particularly of those,
who had been cashiered or driven into exile by Mary, £ as Bill, Parker, May,
* The meetings were to be holden at his house in Cannon Row. To mark the extent and
variety of his talents and occupations, " there," says Lloyd, " you might see him a leading man
among the Statesmen, here most eminent among Divines." But this was the character of
several of his contemporaries, and of none more than the Secretary himself; of the pains taken
by the latter at this time, by consultation with Guest, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, a good
account may be seen in the Annals, i. 120.
t The Device which is still extant, (Cotton. MSS. Julius F. 6.) is well worth consulting, as
shewing first, the boldness of the attempt, to restore the Protestant Religion in the face of such
very formidable opponents; secondly, the comparatively easy manner proposed of removing the
professed Papists from places of trust and power ; thirdly, the determination to uphold and
assist the Reformed in other countries; and fourthly, the making the measures of the late Queen,
for re-introducing the Romish Religion, the model for the re-establishment of the Protestant
Religion.
J It may reasonably be questioned whether these exiles, or Marian refugees, were not in rather
too much haste to return, as far as regarded their own ease ; hence the complaints made to their
friends abroad, of neglect on their arrival.— See Stn/pe's Annuls, i. ch. x. particularly by the cele-
brated John Fox. The moment they heard of Elizabeth's accession, they came in numbers from
Zurich and Strasburgh, leaving the hospitable roofs of those who had given them the most friendly
entertainment there, as Bullinger, Gualter, Weidner, Simler, Lavater, Gesner, &c. Not but that
some appear to have been calle d home, as Grindal particularly, Horn, Sandys, &c. to assist in the
work of the Restitution of the Church ; able preachers and ministers being much wanted. It may
be indeed, that they were too urgently called home, to allow of proper preparations being made for
their reception ; Grindal's expression to Fox, cogor urgent iltus arnicis in Angliam iter instituere,
implies this, considering that the letter bears date December 19, 1559, scarcely a month after
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 43
Cox, Whitehead, Grindal, and Pilkington ; Sir Thomas Smith was to call them
together, and assist them in the work : in the mean while all innovation was
strictly forbidden ; but the course even of these proceedings, the names and
characters of the persons selected, and the hands through which it was to pass,
plainly shew how immediately upon the accession of Elizabeth, the cause of the
Reformation began to revive. The Device itself, with the answers, may be seen
both in Burnet and Strype, but copied from different manuscripts. At the same
time, as a review of the Liturgy was deemed to be an indispensable preliminary,
to the alteration of the Church Services ; this task was assigned to the following
very eminent scholars and divines ; Parker, Bill, May, Cox, Grindal, Whitehead,
and Pilkington, who were to carry on their work privately, and in fact, with the
knowledge only of some very particular persons about the Court, such as the
Marquess of Northampton, the Earls of Bedford and Pembroke, Lord John
Gray and Sir William CECIL (Camden), of the influence of the latter in this
important business we have a curious proof, in the remark of Sampson the
Puritan, as long after as the year 1574, in a letter to the then Lord Treasurer
Burghley, alluding to the Liturgy, he writes, — " What your authority, credit,
and doing then was, you know, God knows, and there are witnesses of it." —
Strype, Annals, i. 119.*
The Queen's own principles it must be confessed, were at first liable to some
doubts. She had received the mass in Mary's time, and appeared attached to
Mary's death, but they must have been the more wanted, because many episcopal sees required
filling; ten were actually vacant, and four more expected daily to become so. (See Jewel's Letters
to Peter Martyr, Burnet, iii.) Whatever inconveniences however they may have had to encounter
on their first return, the Government seems to have been in no manner backward to employ
them, by appointing them to preach before the Court, and at Paul's Cross, in which some acquitted
themselves with more discretion than others : King Edward's Liturgy and Service being restored
by the first Parliament, in which Sir Anthony Cooke, Lady Cecil's father seems to have been
very active, and appointed to be brought into use on a particular day, viz. June 24, 1559, not
only the Papists, but some of the returned exiles of Calvin's school, at first refused to comply ;
though several of the latter afterwards altered their minds ; and when the Papists objected to the
interference of the laity, their Bishops having protested against the passing of the bill, in the
House of Lords, they were properly reminded by Pilkington, afterwards Bishop of Durham, that
Parliament had set forth no new religion, but only restored what had been with the consent and
approbation of the Clergy, " godly began under good King EDWARD;" and consistently with this
representation of matters, I find in a MS. in the Harleian Collection, 1386, Queen Elizabeth's
title set forth, as the " Defender of the trewe, ancient, and Catholic Faithe."
* See what Strype says further oponthis subject, 120; — and Oglethorpe's submission and pro-
fession of his faith, Burnet, Records, vol. ii. no. liii.
44 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
some of the symbols and other superstitions of the Church of Rome ; ' " con-
cerning the Cross, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints," says Camden, " she had
no contemptuory opinion, nor ever spoke of them but with reverence, nor
suffered others patiently to speak unreverently of them." This gave confidence
to the Romanists, and hurried the Reformists into some excesses, but her pre-
judices soon underwent a change. It was early after her accession that she
forbade Oglethorpe to elevate the Host, and though she might have confessed,
as it is alleged of her, to the Spanish Ambassador Count Feria, and the Lord
Lamac, that she acknowledged the real presence in the Sacrament, yet this
cannot prove that she believed the Transubstantiation. The Church of England
to this day professes to believe a real presence to the faithful, though certainly
neither in the way of transubstantiation, or consubstantiation, but " only," as
the article states, ""after an heavenly and spiritual manner ;" we are rather dis-
posed to admire the wise caution, attributed to her when in danger of erring
upon this point, and yet unwilling to speak decisively; she is said to have replied
to those who were sent by Gardiner to inquire what she thought of those words
of Christ, "this is my body:"
" Christ was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it ;
And what the Word did make it,
That I believe and take it." — Howcll's State of Great Britain.
There was certainly much ingenuity in this,* whether true or not ; nor did
she deviate from it, when she proposed that some alterations in Edward's Rubric
should be made, that might seem, as it were, to leave the precise nature of the
real presence still undecided. " And lastly the Rubric that was added at the
end of the communion-office, in the second book of King Edward VI. against
* To pretend to define the real presence, even where Transubstnntiation was admitted, would
have been absurd. Who could believe that the following differences occurred between the
Jacobins and Cordeliers at the Council of Trent, though it is very credibly reported ; the Jacobins
pretended, as Jurieu writes, that the body of our Saviour is made present in the Eucharist, by way
of production, because the body of Jesus Christ without coming down from heaven, where it is in
its natural being, is rendered present in the bread by a re-production of the same substance,
according to which doctrine the substance of the bread is changed into the substance of the Lord's
body. The Cordeliers on the other hand, defended that Transubstantiation which is called
adductive ; they alleged that our Lord's body is brought down from heaven, not by a successive,
but momentary change, and that the substance of bread is not changed into the substance of the
body of Jesus Christ, but that the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ succeeds into the place of
the substance of the bread being conveyed thither from another place \\-Hlstory of the Council
of Trent, 285.— 1551.
1559.-] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. '45
the notion of our Lord's real and essential presence in the Holy Sacrament, was
left out in this ; for it being the Queen's desire, if possible, to unite the nation in
one faith ; it was therefore recommended to the Divines, to see that there should
be no definition made against the aforesaid notion, but that it should remain as a
speculative opinion not determined, in which every one was left to the freedom
of his own mind." In the first year of the next reign an addition was made to
the Catechism, concerning the Sacraments, as it stands at this day. — See Intro-
ductory Discourse to Wheatly's Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer.
How far the real presence might conscientiously be' asserted, by those who did
not go the length of acknowledging the doctrine of transubstantiation, may be
seen in Ridley's reply to the Lords Commissioners at Oxford in the late reign,
1555. As the real presence is undoubtedly a Church doctrine at this time, and
was so accounted by Jewel in his famous Apology, at the period we are treating
of, (see Enchiridion Theologicum, i. 217, &c.) we shall venture to transcribe
the following reasonable account of it, to be found in Rogers's Catholic Doctrine
of the Church of England, on the ivth proposition of the xxvnith article. The
regenerate have in them a double life ; one carnal, the other spiritual. The life
carnal and temporary they brought with them into this world : the spiritual was
given to them afterward, in their second birth through the Word, 1 Peter i. 23.
The Yife carnal and corporal is common to all men, good and bad, and is main-
tained and preserved by earthly and corruptible bread, common also to all and
to every man : the life spiritual is peculiar only to God's elect ; and is cherished
by the bread of life which came down from Heaven, which is Jesus Christ, who
now sitteth and sustaineth the spiritual life of Christians, being received of them
by faith, John vi. 35, 52. which faith (being in place of hands and mouth to
the soul) we verily receive the true body and the true blood of Christ, to the
cherishing of the spiritual life in our souls, — and for this he cites many foreign
confessions, besides the Scriptures.
The Question of the Eucharist was certainly the most important question to
be discussed, between the Romish and Reformed Churches ; because the
doctrine of Transubstantiation was calculated to raise the Romish priesthood so
high in the estimation of the people, that there was little likelihood of prevailing
against them, unless this doctrine could be overthrown. For what indeed did
this doctrine infer? that by the consecration of the elements, the Priest was able
to bring down from heaven the very body of the Word incarnate, and having
done so, to offer it up again as a living sacrifice, for any sins committed, by the
4fl MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
quick or the dead ; a power so great must needs inspire the ignorant multitude
with a most superstitious awe of the persons of the Priests, especially as the
dispensers of pardons, by virtue of the atonement they always had to offer afresh,
for the sins of individuals, in the sacrifice of the mass.*
According to the principles of the Reformation throughout Europe, the great
point to be ascertained was, whether this doctrine had undoubtedly the support
of Scripture, now adopted and received by all Protestants, as the only standard
of truth, or rule of faith. And how could this be more effectually and respec-
tably decided, than by conferences and disputations of the learned of both
parties ; several such conferences and disputations had already been holden, as
we have shewn, but as the last reign had unsettled what, if not fully settled
under Edward, had been nearly so, there could not have been a graver or more
satisfactory mode adopted, of bringing this question to an issue, for the rest of
the Queen's reign, than by making a fresh appointment of learned persons,
once more to discuss it, with all the weight and authority that could be conferred
upon them, and all the solemnity which so serious a discussion might require.
On the meeting of Parliament, therefore, this course was adopted ; the oppor-
tunity for it being much improved by the return of those learned and. very eminent
divines of whom we have spoken, from the shelter they had sought in foreign
countries during the persecutions of the late reign ; and as the expedient in
contemplation, seems particularly to have proceeded from the advice and sug-
gestions of the Secretary, f it is probable, that he was the occasion of their being
* It is curious to trace the origin and course of these abuses. The Sacrament, at first, was
always administered. None came to the Christian assemblies who did not stay to receive the
mysteries ; and in the poverty of the Church, the clergy were supported by the people's oblations
at the altar: afterwards the people grew remiss in their devotions; but the priests, to keep up the
oblations, persuaded the laity to come to the Sacrament and offer, though they did not stay to
receive the Sacrament; and deluded them with the notion, that it was sufficient for the Priest alone
to receive in behalf of the whole people, and as they had changed the symbols into the very body
and blood of Christ, so they changed the festival, commemorative of his sacrifice, into a real
expiatory sacrifice, and persuaded them that the Priest's consecrating and consuming the
Sacrament was propitiatory for the dead and the living.
t The account given by the Domestic of this Conference is not judged to be quite correct. He
says, that it was not only " by his Lords/lip's advice there was a Conference had in Westminster
Churche, by the old and new Bishops, and other learned men, upon some questions and points
devised principally by himself touching the exercise of Religion ;" but that it was " so politically
handled, and by himself (Lord Burghley) so wisely, learnedly, and temperately governed, that
such satisfaction was given, as the Quene, and whole state of Parliament, with one consent
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 47
so soon and so earnestly called home. It may have been in a great measure to
satisfy the Queen's mind, who did not wish to have the Catholics too roughly
handled, and who had certainly some tincture of Romanism in her disposition.*
A public disputation was therefore appointed by the Privy Council, to be
holden between certain of the Popish bishops and other learned men of their
communion, and as many Protestant divines ; eight on one side, and eight on
the other.
The four Catholic Bishops and four Doctors were these ; White, Watson,
Baine, and Scot, Bishops of Winchester, Lincoln, Lichfield and Coventry, and
Chester ; with Dr. Cole, Dean of St. Paul's ; Langdale, Harpsfield, and Chedsey,
Archdeacons of Lewes, Canterbury, and Middlesex. And on the Protestant
side, John Scory, late Bishop of Chichester, David Whitehead, John Jewel, John
Aylmer, Richard Cox, Edmund Grindal, Robert Home, and Edmund Guest, the
latter particularly nominated by Sir William.
The points to be argued, and which are very commonly referred to the
Secretary, ~\ were these three, First, whether it is against the word of God, and
the custom of the ancient Church, to officiate, and administer the sacraments,
in a language unknown to the people ? Secondly, whether every Church has
authority to appoint, to change, or to set aside, ceremonies and ecclesiastical
rites, provided the same be done to edification ? Thirdly, whether it can be
proved by the word of God, that there is offered in the mass a propitiatory sacri-
fice for the quick and dead ? The Papists were to defend the negative of the
established the forme of Religion now used and preached all this Quene's tyme, to the glory of
God, the honor of the Quene, the peace of vthe realme, the weale of the people, and the profitable
praise of those that weare instruments to worke so notable a blessing for theire contrie, as to
bring it into the bright shyning light of the Gospell." That the Secretary was (he adviser of
the Conference, and the drawer-up of the propositions, Mr. Peck thinks true enough, but that he
governed or presided over the Conference, he thinks wrong, that being decidedly the place and
office of his brother-in-law, the Lord Keeper.
* Her great objections to the marriage of the Clergy, in all likelihood, prevented any bill being
brought into Parliament this Session, to revive King Edward's acts for the marriage of Priests,
which Mary had repealed. We shall see hereafter, how much the Secretary exerted himself to
remove these prejudices from the Queen's mind.
f Nothing could be more reasonable on the part of the surviving friend and co-adjutor of the
martyrs, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, than to bring the Papists to such a trial ; when they
knew, that under Mary, they could engage in a Conference with the Protestants with a certainty
of success, they were willing enough to dispute, now they made pretence, that the Catholic cause
ought not to be submitted to such an arbitration. — See Neal's History of the Puritans.
48 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
first, and the affirmative of the last question, and the Protestants were to make
good the affirmative of the second.
These disputations and conferences, were to take place, and did take place,
as far as they went, in the presence of many of the Nobility and Commons in
Westminster Abbey, and before the Lord Keeper Bacon, as President or Chair-
man, to keep order, and hold the parties close to the terms of the question,
without, however, having any voice in the decision of the several points. They
began on the 31st of March, 1559.
Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, has given us as full an account, perhaps,
as can be necessary of this celebrated Conference, which as far as regarded the
Government, may be considered as adopted more for form-sake, than any thing
else ; that is, as the Convocation had put out its articles, in hopes of retaining
the Romish faith in all its force, to evince its disposition still to hear both
sides, before the measures of the preceding reign were definitively cancelled,
and so far it must have done good ; for the course and conduct of it was such,
as plainly to shew, that the Papistical party sought to interrupt matters by their
shifts and cavils, in such a manner, as to frustrate the end in view ; which was,
no doubt, to have the second question fairly established in the affirmative, and
the untenableness of the other two, exposed ; for the satisfaction of those who
might otherwise hesitate to return to the principles of the Reformation ; for it
can scarcely be doubted, but that the issue of the contest was foreseen by those
who set it on foot, the Papists never being able to encounter with those who
take the Scriptures alone for their standard. Nevertheless, they had every fair
opportunity afforded them of arguing the points upon that ground, if they had
chosen it ; or even upon the writings of doctors and fathers of the Church, and
the ancient Councils, for in these things the Protestants shewed themselves
quite ready to contend with them ; but they would not submit to the order
enjoined, of delivering their sentiments in writing; and, indeed, by other ob-
jections of a most frivolous and captious nature, plainly betrayed the weakness
of their cause *— had their cause been good, neither learning nor abilities were
wanting, to have given them a better countenance in the argument, f But they
* The best defence made for them, probably is, that without the consent of the Pope, they
could not allow such great matters to be called in question.— Camden.
t In the House of Lords, the learning of the Popish divines may be said to have been displayed
in the speeches of Hethe, Archbishop of York, Scot, Bishop of Chester, and Feckenham, Abbot
of Westminster, on the bills for restoring the Queen's supremacy, and the new Service Book.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 49
undoubtedly gave up the contest, not having the same disposition to dispute
now, as was the case under the former reign ; while the Protestants were
anxious, and proposed to go on, as Bishop Jewel declared in one of his Ser-
mons, " for at the last disputation that should have been, every one knew
which party gave over, and would not meddle."
It might have been well, if the Government could have been excused punish-
ing the refractory disputants on the Popish side, but it is certain that they were
judged worthy of punishment, according to the course of proceedings in those
days. Sanders* indeed informs us, that some of them proposed to excommunicate
the Queen, and the leading parties; praising their magnanimity in this. White
and Watson were the most forward in recommending the measure of excommu-
nication ; for which they were committed to the Tower. Great pains appear to
have been taken to mitigate the severities of the punishment, and that, very much
in consideration of the dignity and character of the sufferers. f
On the 8th of May, 1559, the Parliament was dissolved ; on the 24th of June,
the act for the use of the English Prayer Book took place ; at which time the
oath of Supremacy being tendered to the Bishops and Clergy, all the Bishops,
except Kitchin of Landaff, refused it ; this gave the Queen and her Council great
displeasure, but afforded the former a good opportunity of openly declaring how
resolved she was to cast off' the usurped and pretended authority of the See of
Rome. It was at this time, that some discoveries took place, of a secret corres-
Speeches, in which, as Collier rightly says, " they argued with something of colour, and made
a bold push for their persuasion;" which they might do the more confidently, because there were
at the time no reformed Bishops in the House to answer them, and the controversy was too much
embarrassed with ecclesiastical learning, to be managed by the temporal Lords. The Author
of the Memoirs of Lord Burghley, alluding to this Parliament, observes, that Popery was over-
thrown, and true religion restored, " all within three months, while the Bishops, who were
zealous creatures of Rome, and all the Popish Lords, sat, voted, and spoke in Parliament,
fiercely as well as freely. So that the Reformation came in openly and legally by the voice of
the people and authority of the legislature. Such was the happy issue of wise Cecil's well-con-
certed scheme."
* Sanders is in general a good authority with Catholic writers. Dr. Lingard, however, says no-
thing about the excommunication, but merely states, that it was pretended that the disputants, who
were imprisoned or fined, deserved this severity by their disobedience ; but the real object was, as
he adds, by the imprisonment of the two prelates and the fear of the punishments which threatened
others, to silence the opposition in the House of Lords.— Vol. v. 154,4th edit.
t Strype's Annals, i. chap. v.
VOL. II. H
50 MEMOIRS. OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
pondence with Rome, during King Edward's reign, in which these Bishops had
a share, being countenanced and upheld by the Princess Mary, late Queen,
among whose papers many important letters to that effect had been lately found.
Being self-deprived or ejected by their own refusal of the oath of Supremacy,
their Sees became vacant. What became of them severally, may be seen in Cam-
den, Strype, Collier, &c.
Some notice perhaps should be taken of the proceedings of the Convocation,
though its attempts, to keep things on the footing they were in the last reign,
soon failed. It met on the 24th of January, the day before the Parliament as-
sembled, instead of the day after as was intended, had not the Queen's illness
interfered, a circumstance which has led Collier and others into a mistake.
Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury was chosen prolocutor of the Lower House,
and Boner, there being no Archbishop of Canterbury, presided in the Upper. In
hopes of preserving their religion, they came to an agreement upon five articles,
which they wished the Bishops to lay before the Upper House of Parliament the
next day. The three first related entirely to the Sacrament of the Altar, being the
very articles maintained at Oxford against Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer (see
our first volume) ; and if these articles would have settled the faith of the country,
they had decided that, in the Sacrament of the Altar, by virtue of the words of
Christ spoken by the Priest, the natural body of Christ, conceived of the Virgin
Mary, and his natural blood were present realiter. That after consecration there
remains no substance of bread and wine, but only the substance of God and man;
and that in the mass the true body and true blood of Christ are offered, as a pro-
pitiatory sacrifice, for the living and the dead. The two other articles related
to the power, authority, and infallibility of the Church, as derived to the Pope
from Peter the Apostle ; and this was almost all that passed in this Convocation,
which only lasted till the middle of May. It does not appear that the articles
were ever exhibited to the House of Lords, though given by Boner to the Lord
Keeper, and though Mary's Bishops and some Abbots still sat in the House.
The proceedings in Parliament were certainly very different from the pro-
ceedings in Convocation ; tending as much to establish the Reformed principles,
as the acts of Convocation were designed to maintain those of the Church of
Rome.
The following is a fair but concise enumeration of the acts passed, in the first
year of the Queen's reign, as connected with the Church.
I. An Act restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the state,
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 51
ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign power* repugnant to
the same.
II. For the uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church, and the
administration of the Sacraments.
' III. Of recognition of the Queen's Highness' .title to the Imperial Crown of
this realm.
IV. For the restitution of the first-fruits and tenths, and rents reserved 'nomine
decimte,' and of parsonages impropriate, to the Imperial Crown of the realm.
All these bills, and some more that might be mentioned, particularly such of
Edward's reign as were now revived, after being repealed by Mary, were vigor-
ously opposed by the Popish Bishops still in the house, and upon the question of
the Queen's supremacy some very curious speeches were made, particularly by
Archbishop Hethe, Scot, Bishop of Chester, and Abbot Feckenham. The latter
of whom allowed himself to fall into an abuse of our early Reformers, for which
he was well corrected by Strype. The Papists, however, were not the only ob-
jectors : those who had come from the school of Geneva began now to avow
their principles ; and to object, as far as they could venture to do it, to all magis-
terial influence whatsoever with the Church. Presbyterianism had now been
long on foot; the year 1541 being assigned as the period of its commencement.
As a settled rule, of the reformed church of France and Switzerland, lay-elders
were admitted to be members of the synod, but the synod itself was to be inde-
pendent of all civil rule ; appeals to it being admitted even against the royal
authority itself, where any thing treasonable was objected against persons in the
discharge of any ministerial duty or office. The objections made to the Queen's
assumption of the title of Supreme Head of the Church, though ill-founded in
reality, seems to have been judged so worthy of attention as to lead to a change of
the title, and an explanatory article, as we shall have occasion to shew hereafter, f
It deserves attention that, on Elizabeth's accession to the throne, the affairs of the
Church were by no means brought to the simple question, as between Cathlics
and Protestants, Romanists and Reformists. The latter were divided on points both
of doctrine and discipline ; many were for adopting the Augustan Confession of
* Trial was made this very year to send into the kingdom a nuncio from the Pope, Martinego :
but being deliberated upon at Greenwich, it was determined to be against the ancient and late
laws of the realm, and that he could not come without great peril to the peace of the kingdom. In
1560, 1561, the attempt was repeated, but finally failed. — See Strype s Annals, i. 165, 166.
+ Injunctions for ordering of matters of the church and religion, called the Queen's Injunctions,
as put forth in virtue of her supremacy, were published at this time, supposed to be framed or com-
52 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
the Lutherans, which excited great jealousy and alarm in the breasts of those who
had been more connected with Switzerland. We shall find this difference to be
the occasion of difficulties, of no small moment, all through this reign ; and per-
haps attended with more trouble to Lord Burghley than to any other individual
in the kingdom. One act of this Parliament, connected with the affairs of the
Church, however, must not be passed over : we mean the act for giving authority
to the Queen's Majesty, upon the avoidance of any archbishoprick or bishoprick, '
to take into her hands certain of the temporal possessions thereof, recompensing
the same with parsonages impropriate and tenths.
It would draw us aside too much from the principal subject of our work to
enter far into the history and circumstances of this act, especially as we have
references to make, which may help to supply all that the reader may wish to know
about it. Strype, as usual, relates the most important particulars of the proceed-
ings, as dispassionately as any historian could be expected to do, considering that
in the remonstrances of the clergy, there was certainly very much to turn the
Queen aside from an act of manifest injustice, if she could have been so turned.*
But as many as fourteen sees being vacant, and Queen Mary's Popish Bishops
having, in expectation of their own short sway, granted such leases, as amounted
almost to alienation, it is no wonder that the spoliation should go on, especially
as there were those at hand, among the returned exiles, who thought some abridg-
piled by the persons to whom had been confided the revisal of King Edward's book, and subjected
afterwards to the review of Sir William Cecil, as Strype intimates ; and in which he seems, from
a passage in one of Archbishop Parker's letters to him, 1575, to have gone a little too far in that
Prelate's opinion ; " whatever the [Queen's] ecclesiastical prerogative is, I fear it is not so great as
your pen hath given it in the Injunctions;" (see Slrype's Annals, i. 236.) — but notwithstanding the
Archbishop's misgivings, it would seem from the admonition annexed to the Injunctions, about the
oath of supremacy, particular care was taken to point out the limits of the Regale, or ecclesiastical
supremacy upon the very principle of the 37th Article of the church. — See Strype's Annals, i. 236.
Cotter, ii. 433.
* We cannot positively vouch for the advice given bythe Secretary on this occasion, but as the
best remonstrance was addressed to the Queen herself, by his old friend Dr. Cox, Bishop of Ely,
" an ancient and very learned man," as Strype calls him, " and in great esteem both with the Queen's
father and brother," and as some of the remonstrances of Parker, afterwards Archbishop of Can-
terbury, were immediately addressed to him, we may reasonably suppose that he was by no means
a principal promoter of the bill. In the reign of King Edward VI. we have shewn that he wished
to be set right upon the subject, even in cases where he could not prevail against the covetousness
of others. The Popish Bishops, by their corrupt manners, had doubtless in many instances abused
their riches, but certainly not in all, witness the rich endowments we owe to them, in a great variety
of places.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 53
ment of the worldly means of Bishops might render them better pastors than the
Popish Bishops, their predecessors, with their king-like power, had shewn them-
selves to be. Jewel himself wrote thus to Simler, who had been among the first to
congratulate him upon his becoming a bishop ; but Jewel does not justify the act.
Collier, as may be expected, is very warm upon the subject, though not without
reason, when he is read with candour, and a just regard to the equity of the case.
In the Commons, it seems, when the bill was to pass, 134 were for it, and 90
against it. "Could I recover," he says, "the names of those ninety gentlemen
who dissented, I would do them the justice to transmit their memory to posterity :
but they will suffer nothing by the silence of records ; for if the rest of their lives
answered this vote, they will always stand in a much better register of honour
than history can give them." He draws the following conclusion besides, after
his usual manner, from the total omission of the clergy in this and other com-
missions for taking accounts of the Bishops' lands, &c. "From hence the reader
may perceive this, Queen Elizabeth's, Parliament was under no excesses of su-
perstition, no manner of partialities to the Church." Though Collier is not con-
sidered as a very temperate judge of such cases, in many points he certainly has
justice on his side. The parallel he draws between this case and the Queen's
wards, p. 423, is very much to the purpose.
But it is time to look to the Continent. We have already seen, that the nego-
tiations for peace, begun in the late reign, were not allowed to suffer any inter-
ruption ; that, on the contrary, fresh powers, and new Commissioners were sent
out, to bring things if possible to a conclusion. Towards the very close of the
last reign, as is related in our first volume, England had suffered, through the
ignorance and supineness of Mary's Ministers, more bent upon extirpating he-
resy than defending her possessions, the most mortifying and distressing loss
that could possibly have occurred. We mean of course the town of Calais,
the key of France, the proudest trophy of the battle of Cressy ; nor had the
capture of this town, by the admirable skill, valour, and judgment of the Duke
of Guise (the victorious defender of Metz against the power of Charles V. in
1552), redounded more to the disgrace of England, than to the glory of France,
smarting under the wound inflicted on her by the battle of St. Quintin. To recover
this fortress could not fail to be one of the first objects in any negotiations for
peace ; where the credit and strength of England were felt and valued as they
should be ; and this seems indeed to have been the case with the three Commis-
sioners originally employed by Mary, though not with her feeble and insensible
54 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
Ministry; for it is remarkable, that on the 18th of November, 1558, the very day
after Mary's death and Elizabeth's accession, dispatches had been made up for
England, which admirably express the anxious desire of the Commissioners
(Lord Arundel, Bishop Thirlby, and Dr. Wottoti), to rouse the Ministry at home
to a just sense of this very circumstance. The dispatch, indeed, which may be
seen in Burnet, iii. 458, relates chiefly to the restoration of Calais, the importance
of which to England (and in a great measure to Philip also with regard to the
Low Countries, which must then have appeared a material object), is admirably
set forth. It is written in a style of remonstrance with Mary's Ministers, who
in a previous dispatch to the Commissioners had shewn, as it appears, some dis-
position to relax upon this point, which the Commissioners lamented, consider-
ing wisely enough, that so far from any such sacrifice being a step to a more
secure and lasting peace, nothing could shew more evidently that the French
did not intend to continue the peace than their eager desire and fixed determi-
nation to retain Calais; for with Scotland on one hand, and Calais on the other,
and their pretensions on both kingdoms, in virtue of the rights and claims of
Mary Queen of Scots, it was easy to conjecture what might ensue. "The
French," they observe, " would sign any terms to keep Calais, but these
would be only parchement and wax," as their words are. " These and other consi-
derations," they continue, "make us to be of opinion that leaving Calais to the
French, they will be content to deliver you a peece of parchemyn, sealed with a
little wax ; but that they mean any contynuance of Peax, we cannot be persuaded,
no more than King Francis did by a nombre of peeces of parchement sealed,
which he sent to King Henry VIII. nor the French King that now is, did by the
Parchemyne sealed, which he sent to King Edward VI."
This dispatch must have come to the hands, not of Mary's old Ministers as
intended, but Elizabeth's new ones; and on this account it is certainly extremely
curious. We plainly see from it, the perfidious enemies with whom England
had to deal.* We see in its strongest light the magnitude of the loss she
* I find a curious passage relative to Calais, in a letter written eight years earlier, from Dr.
Wotton to Sir William Cecil : " And knowing the great desyre that they (the French) have to live
in peace with us, that is to say, to have Calais again, (for the keeping thereof say they, is the
onelye cawse of any warre betwixt us, and they having recovered that once from us, would not
fayle ever after to lyve in peace with us,) an orator of less eloquence than Tully, might per-
adventure persuade me that our frendes having suche occasion, wolde have as moche respect to
their commoditie, as to theyr Promess, which is wonte to bynde French mene as long as it shall
please theym." This letter is dated from Canterbury, January, 1 550, and may be seen in Haynes.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 55
had sustained through the weakness of Mary's Ministers ; we see their supine-
ness about the recovery of it after it had been lost ; we see besides, what is
particularly important, the knowledge the Commissioners and the Government
at home entertained of the designs of the French upon England, in case of a
vacancy of the throne, for though this may be thought to be expressed
obscurely, the passage cannot well be otherwise interpreted ; especially as the
dispatch was in answer to one from the Ministry, of Nov. 8th, in which they
notice the Queen (Mary's) great weakness, and that they were driven to mistrust
the worst. The expression was this; the French, they remind the Ministry, could
easily annoy England on the side of Scotland; the Dauphin being then married
to the Queen of Scots: "and what the French pretended unto by that marriage,
is not unknown to your Lordships." (This probably was, says Burnet, to claim
the Crown of England upon the Queen's death.)
We may now then see the importance of Lord Burghley's memorandums
relative to the assumption of the royal title and arms of England and Ireland ;
as decisive marks of what was supposed to be intended by the French, even
before Mary died, and consequently before Cecil had any concern with the
Government; and we may see how much the loss of Calais must have con-
tributed to favour such pretensions, being taken besides by the Duke of Guise,
the uncle of Mary Queen of Scots.*
But peace, or at least a truce, was rendered particularly necessary to
Elizabeth, by the very disasters that had befallen Mary. She wanted the
protection of stronger garrisons at home, both towards France and Scotland;
* In the first volume of Forbes's View of the Transactions in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,
p. 15, may be seen a letter from Dr. Wotton to Sir William Cecil, dated from Brussels, Jan. 9th,
1559, in which the views of the GUISES with respect to the Scottish Queen's pretensions are so
plainly set forth as particularly to deserve the attention of the reader. This letter may also serve to
shew in what estimation Sir William was held, by the very servants and ministers of the newly
deceased Sovereign. Dr. Wotton was a Catholic and a very eminent Statesman, and yet no man
could write more unreservedly or confidentially to Sir William, than would appear to be the case
from this very letter ; nor could any man more sagaciously set forth the little trust to be placed in
the French, as negotiators for peace. He wished for peace heartily and sincerely, but, says he,
"I mean a peace indeed, and not the name only of a peace, or a piece of paper, only containing
words of a treaty of peace ;" but of such a " true peace with France," he seems utterly to have
despaired, pp. 18, 19. The whole letter, as amounting to a plain proof and demonstration that
Elizabeth's new Protestant Secretary, did not think worse of the French and their views upon
England through Scotland, than Mary's own Catholic Minister Plenipotentiary, is extremely worth
reading.
56 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
she wanted money' wherewith to accomplish this, and time to do it in. But if
Calais were apparently so irrecoverable while Mary lived, and Philip had a
double interest in obtaining it, it could not but be much more irrecoverable by
Elizabeth's Commissioners, after Philip's addresses had been declined, and,
Mary's occupation of the throne being come to an end, the pretensions of Mary
Queen of Scotland, backed by the power of France, and the hopes of all
zealous Catholics, began to be brought into operation. True indeed it is, that
Philip had reason to prevent its passing into the hands of the French, if
Elizabeth's Crown could be preserved to her against the pretensions of the
Queen of Scots ; but of this, Philip and the Spaniards in general seem to have
doubted, since, as Camden relates, in their apprehensions, lest the French should
obtain England" in right of Mary, they had endeavoured privily to withdraw
from England the Lady Katherine Grey, as the heir of the Suffolk line, in order
to set her up against Mary Queen of Scots, upon the credit of Henry's will.
To surrender Calais entirely would have made any peace extremely unpopular,
but without the means of insisting on its immediate restitution it would have
been idle to have continued the war.* On the 2d of April therefore a peace
was concluded, according to the following entry in Lord Burghley's notes.
" April 2. Peace concluded at Casteau in Cambrensis for France and
Scotland, by Charles Cardinal of Lorrain, Arras de Montmorenci, Jaques Albon
Marquis of Fronsace, and Seigneur of St. Andre, John Morvillier Bishop of
Orleans, and Claude Aubespine, Secretary ; and for England, by the Lord
William Howard of Effingham, Thomas Bishop of Ely, and Dr. Nich. Wotton."t
And on the 7th, according to the same notes, it appears, that this peace,
made with the French King and the Queen of Scots, was proclaimed at
Casteau in Cambrensis, and that on the 18th the treaty of Cambray for
Scotland was confirmed by Francis and Mary, King and Queen of Scots.
What was stipulated with regard to Calais on this occasion, though mis-
represented by French authors, Mezerai and Daniel in particular,^ whom
Rapin, however, corrects, was this :
* In the Secret Memoirs of Leicester, it is strongly insinuated, that he suffered himself to be
bribed by the French, to promote the surrender of Calais, p. 76, hereby imitating his father, who
in the fourth year of King Edward, sold Boulogne to the French by a like treaty.
t The French called this, la malheureuse paix, from the concessions made to Spain.— See
Henaull, and Diet. Historique, Art. Henri II.
t In correcting these authors, Rapin throws in a caution, which we must confess we have
found but too much reason to regard through the whole course of our researches. " This
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 57
"That the King of France should have Calais, and the other places in
Picardy conquered from the English, for the space of eight years ; after
which he should be obliged to restore them to the Queen of England.* That
within the space of six months seven foreign merchants, not subjects of
the French King, should engage for the payment of 500,000 crowns of
gold to her Majesty ; as a penal fine, in case the restitution of the place
within the time limited, should be either refused or delayed by Henry or his
successors ; and that notwithstanding, whether the said sum were paid or not
paid, the King of France and his successors should remain under the obliga-
tion to restore Calais and the other places, as they engaged by this treaty.
Hostages also were to be delivered to the Queen till the promised security
should be given. The names of the hostages may be seen in Rapin. One
article in particular stipulated that neither the King of France, nor the King
shews," says he, " how we ought to be on our guard against the national partiality of historians."
Henry was exceedingly blamed for the concessions he made to Philip by this peace, to gratify or
recover his friend the Constable. Pasquier, speaking of it, calls it, Paix non mains honteuse a la
France, qve celle de I' Empereur Jomnian avtc le Rot de Perse, tant descriee par toute I' anciennete.
The number of places surrendered to Philip and his generals, were certainly enormous. The
acquisition of Calais was certainly a great set-off as regarded his views upon England, but this
was only to be retained, after a certain period, by a breach of honour, or a doubtful war. Of
this peace, Baylehas much to say in his article upon Henri II. ; he seems to allow, that France
stipulated to restore Calais at the end of eight years, " et il engagea solennellement la France a
restituer Calais a Angleterre au bout de huit ans." — Note C.
* We may conclude this article not to have been of Dr. Wotton's framing, if what Lloyd
relates of him be true. " He would say," says Lloyd, " rather give away Calais, than reserve a
right in it fifteen years hence ; for never was the interest of any nation so constant, as to keep a
promise half so many years."
That royal infants should be married in their cradles, as it were, is a fact, of which, however
strange, history affords many proofs. Mary Queen of Scots is one, who was so sought by Henry
VIII. for his son, [vol. i.] but this point of Calais had nearly led to two contracts of marriage
between persons unborn, and perhaps never likely to be born. The French, it seems, at one
period of the negotiation, in order to make sure of England one way or the other, proposed that
the eldest daughter of Francis and Mary when born, should marry Elizabeth's eldest son when
born, and Elizabeth's eldest daughter when born, be united to the eldest son of Francis and
Mary ; that Calais should be restored, with the daughter of France, and all claims upon France
by England, be relinquished upon the marriage of Elizabeth's daughter. — Forbes's Transactions,
vol. i. 54. Strange, that, as it turned out, not one of these betrothed, or to-be-betrothed infants,
should have actually ever come into the world !
VOL. II. I
58 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
and Queen of Scotland, nor the Queen of England, should attempt any thing
against one another, either "directly or indirectly, in prejudice of this treaty.
That if the Queen of England violated this article, the King of France and the
King and Queen of Scotland, should be freed from their agreement, and their
hostages and securities discharged; and if the violation came from France, they
should be obliged to restore Calais and the other places, as if the eight years
were expired ; and if they refused to make this restitution, the securities and
hostages should still remain bound."
There was also another article to the following effect : " That all the other
pretensions of the King and Queen of Scotland, and the Queen of England,
with all their exceptions, should remain entire, in the expectation that
Providence would produce some good opportunity to terminate them by a
peace."
And in regard to Scotland, a special treaty was signed, to prevent encroach-
ments and hostilities on either side.*
But on the part of France all this was found to be unsound and unstable ;
and that the French had only agreed in order to cajole Philip, who with some
remains of honesty and regard towards England, had declared that he would
not sign the peace, before Elizabeth had concluded hers.
This was very apparent, when upon the arrival of Ambassadors from France
at Brussels, to see the peace sworn, Ardoy, who appeared there on the behalf
* In May, ambassadors from the French Court, among whom was Mons. Montmoreucy, arrived
in London to witness the ratification of the treaty on the part of the Queen. They were received
with great state and magnificently entertained by her Majesty, who seems to have had nothing
to amuse them with, so much, as the baiting of bulls and bears with English dogs, and which
appears to have so greatly interested their Excellencies, as to induce them to take many English
mastiffs with them on their return to France. — See Nichols's Progresses, i. 67, 68. The Queen,
however, soon discovered that it was to her advantage to encourage military shows and exercises,
of which an account may be seen in the same book. There also may be read all that passed
during this first of her reign, in visits to her different palaces, and the houses of her nobility.
Among the first so honoured with her royal presence, seems to have been the Lord Cobham, at
his seat near Dartford in Kent, now the residence of the Earl of Darnley ; in Lord Burghley's
notes it is stated to be on the 21st of July, that " the Queen's Majesty made her progress into
Kent, and was at Cobham Hall," but in Nichols' Progresses it is said to have been on the 18th.
This discordancy of dates is so common in the 16th century in regard to such and even greater
transactions, that it is scarcely worth noticing.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 59
of the Dauphin and Mary Queen of Scots, gave them the titles of King and
Queen of Scotland, England, and Ireland ;* and this offence was repeated, by
the assumption of the arms, &c. to such a degree as to require the interposition
and remonstrances of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the English Ambassador in
France ; who received from them such frivolous explanations and excuses, as
plainly to evince, as Rapin observes, the little regard they had for his mistress.
But had they been more sincere than they really were, when the peace
was settled in April, there happened an event in two months afterwards, which
increased all the hazards to England, and produced great changes in France
and Scotland. This was the untimely and most unexpected death of Henry II.
of France. It had been ordained, that the peace between France and Spain
should be cemented by two royal marriages ; the King of Spain was to marry
the Princess Elizabeth, f daughter of Henry II., and Philip's great general the
Duke of Savoy, Henry's sister, the Princess Margaret. The ceremonies ac-
companying these marriages, were to be attended with a great deal of magni-
ficence, and particularly, according to the fashion of the times, with justs and
tournaments. The French King was exceedingly fond of these military exer-
cises, being very expert and skilful in them, so that public notice was given of
one to take place, called pas darnies, which was to last three days, and in
which the King was to be the first challenger. On the first day, he sustained
several assaults, and received great applause; he did the same the second
day, which was the 30th of June, but unfortunately, when the entertainment
might have been concluded, the day being far spent, and the Queen had ex-
pressed a desire that he would tilt no more, yet such was the pride and pleasure
he took in it, that he could not be prevailed upon to omit sending a lance to
the Count of Montgomery, Captain of the Scots' guard ; they both entered the
lists, ran against each other, and broke their lances, when a splinter from one of
* After the notice we have taken of the slurs cast on Lord Burghley, for the entries in his
notes relative to the assumption of the title and arms of England and Ireland by Francis
and Mary, it may be well to copy the following passage from Sir James Melvil's Memoirs.
"The Secretary d'Ardois also was sent out of France, to swear the peace in the name of the
Dauphin of France and the Queen of Scotland, giving them this new style, in the name of
Francis and Mary, King and Queen of Scotland, England, and Ireland, &c. ; whereat the
Due d'Alva and Cardinal Granvel smiled, saying, ' This will breed some business, ere it be
long.'" He adds, the Cardinal of Lorrain shortly after caused to be renewed all the Queen of
Scotland's silver vessels, and engraved thereon the arms of England.— Mdvil'sMemoirs, 46.
t Often called Isabella.
60 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
them, striking upon the visor of the King's head-piece, went very deep into his
right eye. From this wound, after suffering much pain,* he died on the 10th of
July, leaving the Crown to pass to Francis, the young husband of Mary Queen
of Scots, who by that means became Queen of France, as well as Scotland,
being undoubtedly by blood, a presumptive heiress also, to the Crowns of
England and Ireland, f
• Different accounts have been given of the effects of the wound, some say he never spoke after-
wards, the lance having penetrated to the brain; some, on the contrary, relate many speeches and
remarks he made on his death-bed. See Bayle, Art. Henri II,, note.— Our own Ambassador, Throck-
morton, was present, and has given the following account of what he saw: — "The force of the
stroke was so vehement, and the pain he had withall so great, as he was much astonished, and had
great adoo (with reeling to and fro) to keep himself on horseback, and his horse in like manner did
somewhat yield. Whereupon with all expedition, he was unarmed in the field, even against the
place where I stood; and as I could discern, the hurt seemed not to be great; whereby I judge
he is but in little danger. I saw a splint taken out of a good bigness; and nothing else was done
to him upon the field : but I noted him to be very weak, and to have the sense of all his limbs almost
benumbed, for being carried away, as he lay along, nothing covered but his face, he moved neither
hand nor foot, but lay as one amazed. There was marvellous great lamentation made for him,
and weeping of all sorts, both men and women."— Forbes, i. 151.
t Henry was a brave Prince, and we may reasonably allow him the credit of being so, having
to cite, in support of it, the authority of Elizabeth herself, if Brantome's account be true, who
writes thus:—" J' ai oui center a la Reine d' Angleterre qui est aujourd'hui, que c'etoit le Roi et
le Prince du Monde qu' elle avoit plus desir6 de voir pour le beau raporte qu' on lui en avoit fait,
et pour la grande renommee qui en voloitpar tout. Etant & table devisant familierement avec
ces Seigneurs, elleditces mots, (apres avoir fort loue le Roi) c'etoit le Prince du monde que j'avois
plus desire de voir, et lui avois deja mande que bien-tot je le verrois, et pour ce j' avois commande
de me faire bien appareiller mes galeres (usant ces mots) pour passer en France espres pour le
voir." The same story is told in the Memoirei des Dames galantes ; but it can scarcely be true, as
referring to the first year of her reign ; she could never have intended at that time to have crossed
the water merely to see Henry II. Bayle however has put it into his Dictionary, as an Historiette
that should not be lost. There is another odd story for which we have the authority of Lord Bacon.
" When I was in Fraftce," says he, " I heard from one Dr. Pena, that the Queen Mother,
Catherine de Medicis, had caused her husband's (the King's) nativity to be cast under a feigned
name, and the Astrologer gave a judgment that he should be killed in a duel; at which the Queen
laughed, thinking her husband to be above challenges and duels; but he was slain upon a course
at tilt, the splinters of the staff of Montgomery going in at his beaver." We must not conclude
the story of this accident without observing that the King nobly forgave Montgomery, and forbade
all processes against him for the injury he had sustained. Catherine de Medicis is supposed how-
ever never to have forgiven him, but to have gratified a long rankling revenge by his execution, in
1574. It must nevertheless be granted, that Montgomery had given great offence by taking arms
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLET. 61
Those who have formed an estimate of Elizabeth's character, from the
many strange traits she exhibited, of a more than womanish vanity, in regard
to her person, and her powers of captivating both foreign and domestic suitors,
have allowed themselves to think that the foundation of all Mary's troubles,
was laid in a paltry, but deep-rooted jealousy on Elizabeth's part, of the com-
parative youth and beauty of her young cousin. In the very first year of her
reign, Mad"e. Keralio does not scruple to write, " Depuis longtemps 1'extreme
beaute de la reine d' Ecosse avoit fait naitre dans Tame d' Elisabeth um secrete
aversion pour elle." But to speak the truth, there were much more solid grounds
of jealousy and alarm to be found, in the state of Mary's pretensions and
connexions. Of her own near relationship to the Crown of England, there
could be no doubt; and as Elizabeth was supposed by her adversaries, to occupy
the throne only in right of her father's will, which Henry had so constructed,
as, apparently, to do great injustice to the issue of his eldest sister, Margaret,
Qupen of Scotland, it cannot be supposed, that there was not as much political
jealousy on the side of Mary, as on that of Elizabeth; let her temper have
been ever so amiable, or her heart ever so innocent. But her connexions
were such, besides, as to expose her beyond every thing to the resentment
of Elizabeth, independent of all personal jealousies. The house of Lorrain,
though one of singular renown, stood at the head of a party devotedly attached
to the Church of Rome, and as violently opposed to the cause of the Reforma-
tion. They were so powerful in France before the death of Henry II., as to
induce that Monarch to procure the release of the Constable Montmorency from
his captivity, as a prisoner of Philip, in order to counteract the over-ruling
tyranny of the Guises, who now, by the King's death, saw their niece elevated
to the throne of France, having in Francis II. a husband of so delicate a
constitution, and talents so unsuited to the government of a great nation, as
easily to inspire the Guises, who stood in the relation of uncles to Mary, with a
will to rule as they chose, the affairs both of France and Scotland, and so it
certainly turned (9|it.
It is idle to talk, much more to write, of those times, as though the great
quarrel were but a contest between two women, and in which some of the
most insignificant of female passions were allowed to give a turn to the most
against the Government, as an arduous and zealous Protestant, and in assisting the Rochellers
during their memorable siege. He was sprung from a younger branch of the Montgomeries, Earls
of Eglinton, in Scotland. See a long account of him in the Dictionnaire Historique, Caen, 1786
62
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
important events ; from the first moment of her accession, Elizabeth may be
said to have had arrayed against her, on some ground or other, all the greatest
potentates of Europe, assisted by the craft and subtlety of able but dishonest
politicians, the rancour of an exasperated hierarchy, and all the Jesuitical tricks
of its superstitious votaries.
But Scotland was doomed to be the theatre, where the enemies of Elizabeth
and England were to display their greatest feats ; the French were never more
determined to make it their "stepping-stone" to England than after the death of
Henry II. It is said, indeed, that a confederacy was entered into between
Philip and Henry, at the Peace of Cambray, to do their utmost to extirpate
heresy, and there was much of this (as they called it) now prevailing in Scotland.
We have already shewn, under the last reign, that the latter country, had, by
a strange inconsistency, been made the refuge and sanctuary of divers persons?
whose adoption of the principles of the Reformation, had rendered it unsafe for
them to continue in England. The number of Protestants therefore in Scotland
had now become considerable, and an object of attention to the Court of France.
It was the great wish and desire of the Guises to be able to frame some reason for
sending troops into Scotland, and by directing the Queen Dowager, their
sister, to do her utmost to reduce the nation to an uniformity of religion, they
hoped to be able to produce that disorder among the principal parties in Scot-
land, as might justify their sending troops thither, to support the friends of the
Romish Church. Rapin's account of these things is short and tolerably correct.
Shortly after the marriage of the young Queen with the Dauphin, he writes,
the affairs of Scotland began to be terribly embroiled. The Princes of Lorrain
having formed the design to attack England by Scotland, believed it imprac-
ticable until the King and Queen were rendered absolute in their kingdom.
They knew it would be difficult to persuade the states of Scotland to be the
instruments of their ambition, in making war upon Elizabeth, in order to place
the Crown of England upon the head of their Queen. The number of Protes-
tants was now so considerable in Scotland that they were almost masters in the
assemblies of the states; consequently it appeared impossible, to draw them
into the project of dethroning a Protestant Queen, who was establishing their
religion in England, to place a Catholic Queen on that throne, who might
thereby be enabled to destroy the Reformation in both kingdoms. It was
therefore necessary to find an excuse for sending an army into Scotland, to
strengthen the Catholic party, which, probably, would be more ready and zealous
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 63
to favour the enterprise. It was with this view, that they obtained of Henry II.
an order to the Queen Regent, and to d'Oysel, commander of the French and
Sootch forces in the pay of France, to suffer no other religion in Scotland than
the Roman Catholic. They easily foresaw this order would produce trouble in
Scotland, and furnish them with a pretence to send thither an army. On the
very day indeed after Henry received his fatal wound, according to Lord
Burghley's notes, an augmentation of the troops in Scotland appears to have
been ordered.
" July 1 .* The French King ordereth, that two hundred men at arms, and
twenty ensignes of footmen shall be sent into Scotland. La Brosse, and the
Bishop of Amiens appointed to go as Ambassadors into Scotland.
" On the 10th the King died, according to the same notes.
"July 10. Henry II. French King died.f
" July 11. Thomas Cecill J came out of France with 'news of the King's death."
On which very day, Lord Burghley also notes, that consultation was held
there for the French King's style and arms for England to be joined with
France, and then on the 16th follows the memorandum already cited, "Ushers
going before the Queen of Scotts (being now the French Queen) to the Chappel
cry, Place pour le Reine d 'Angleterre"^
* On the 4th of July, Throckmorton from Paris, communicated to Cecil a project on foot among
the Guises, to have the Earl of Argyle, Murray, and the Lord Dun, and a number of others their
inferiors, " apprehended, their goods confiscate, and themselves to lose their lives." — Forbes, i.
152. He speaks of their using every endeavour to intercept his letters, ib. — See also p. 193.
f In September following the Queen caused his obsequies to be observed in great state, and
at considerable expense in the cathedral of St. Paul's ; for an account of which see Strype's
Annals, i. ch. is. — and Nichols' Progresses, vol. i. 76.
I Eldest son of the Secretary by his first wife, the sister of Sir John Cheke, vol. i. 7. born
May 5, 1542, afterwards Earl of Exeter. Throckmorton, in a letter to the Secretary from Paris,
June 10, 1559, thus speaks of him. " I assure you, Sir, in my opinion you have good cause to
rejoice in him ; and amongst other things, that being in the wantonest time of his youth, he is so
honest, and so well stayed." — Forbes, i. 124.
\ It should be observed, that Mary's pretences to the English Crown, were very seriously
questioned, by the most eminent statesmen, among whom the Secretary appears to have
been one, on the ground of her being born out of the kingdom, and of parents not in the
obedience of the King of England. — Seethe Memorial in Sadler's State Papers, vol. i. 731.
and Robertson. Lady Lenox was judged by some to have a superior title on the above grounds,
as well as on her nearer relationship to the Crown by birth, she being the daughter, and Mary
only the grand-daughter of Margaret, sister of Henry VIII.
64 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
Could any thing well be plainer than this, as to the designs of the French
Court, against Elizabeth. Mary, it is true enough, might be at that time only the
innocent cause of these proceedings, but they certainly placed her in the situation
of a dangerous rival to Elizabeth, as well as a bitter foe to the Reformation in
England and Scotland ; and as such, the wary* minister and protector of Elizabeth,
could not but keep his eye upon her, as the instrument wherewith the enemies
of England and Elizabeth meant to carry on their machinations against both.
On the 27th of July some check seems to have been put upon these proceed-
ings, for Lord Burghley makes the following memorandum on that day.
"The Constable of France (Montmorency the opponent of the Guises) staid
the publication of the stile and armes of England." But this does not appear to
have had any very general effect, for after that we find an entry as late in the
year, as November 1559, the last month of the first year of Elizabeth's reign,
stating that on Mary's entry into Chatelherault, her style was published as
Queen of England. In the mean while, as Camden relates, other things occurred
in France, offensive both to the Court and people of England ; her merchants
were injuriously treated, and her ambassadors publicly insulted. Ships from
Marseilles were sent to cruise in the British seas, and preparations openly carried
on in the sea-ports of France, manifesting much more extensive designs, than
the mere preservation of Mary's Scotch Crown from a faction, as the reformed
party were esteemed.
All these things put together may help us to form some idea, of the perilous
situation in which Elizabeth stood, on her first accession to the Crown, and the
* So far from being too forward, to guard against the French practices at this time, Throck-
morton judged it not amiss to urge Cecil to be more quick in his preparations. " Albeit I know
your carefulness is great," he writes from France, September 23, 1559, "yet being daily troubled
with the common bruit of the French Queen's pretence to the realm of England, her open
usurping of the arms and all other things sounding to that end, which it grieveth me to hear ; I
cannot hold my peace, but must needs put you in remembrance hereof. Let us not tempt God too
far; and as Queen Mary did upon occasion (as she took it) of miracle shewed towards her over
her enemies, be negligent in the charge committed to the Prince ; referring all to God, without
doing any thing ourselves ; the success whereof we yet smart for." — Forbes, i. 238. In the very
next letter indeed in the collection, he writes to Elizabeth herself, " I would to God, I had some
true intelligence, and good occasion to vary in the course of my advertisements to your Majesty,
concerning the French devotions and determinations, but they be so resolved, and make so good
a reasoning in their opinion, that almost they care not who knoweth, that they mean to prosecute
the French Queen's title to England." This letter is dated from Rheims, September 24, 1559.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BtfRGHLEY. 65
need she had of a Minister, who could look through all these difficulties, dis-
cern their springs and consequences with a steady eye, without being dismayed
at the impoverished and dismantled state of the Kingdom, through Mary's mis-
government, or disheartened in standing forth as the champion of Elizabeth's
disputed title, and her defender against a host of foes, powerful, subtle, and
intriguing, and upon many principles, bent upon her dethronement, the eleva-
tion of Mary of Scotland, and the subjugation of both parts of the British
Island.
Here then we^might conclude our account of the first year of the reign of
ELIZABETH. If it did not appear still necessary to take a general view of
ecclesiastical aifairs, at this very important period, in order the better to under-
stand, how cautiously,* amongst a thousand difficulties, the Reformation was
revived, and brought back as nearly as possible, to that state in which it stood,
before the interruption of Mary's short but sanguinary reign.
We have already shewn, that for fear of hurrying matters on too much, the
friends of the Reformation began at first to consult and act in secret. Select
persons were chosen out of the Council, to consider of these things, of the
changes that might be expedient or necessary, but above all, of the most
advisable steps to be taken, to effectuate such changes, with the least possible
disturbance of the public tranquillity ; a select number of Divines, being in
the mean while commissioned and employed, with as little noise and as much
privacy as they could, to revise King Edward's Liturgy, of the original compi-
* " La Reine Elisabeth ne precipita rien, parce que les changemens de religion dans un etat
exigent une prudence infinie, elle gagna les cceurs, elle prepara les esprits." — Millot. The follow-
ing remarks of this sensible writer, on the good effects of the Reformation, civil and political,
may justly be added ; especially as proceeding from a member of the Church of Rome, as the first
sentence may serve to shew. " Si 1'Angleterre eut le malheur de s'egarer dans la route du salut,
la reforme luifut avantageuse, i plusieurs egards, dans 1'ordre civil et politique. La population
augmenta, des que le celibat religieux fut aboli, mi grand nombre des fetes, vnal sanctifiees par la
faineantise,nesnspendit plus les travaux necessaires a la societe. Les disputes de jurisdiction, entre
le sacerdoce et la puissance temporelle, ne rompirent plus 1' harmonie interieures du gouverne-
ment, 1' Industrie cessa d' etre reserree et etouffee, par les possessions immense du clerge et des
rnoins. On fut k couvert des entreprises et des exactions ruineuses de la cour de Rome, quantite
d' abus qui faisoient perdre de 1' argent, le temps, les sujets, se dissiperent d'eux-memes." It
may very reasonably be supposed that such an observer of things, and so close a calculator of
effects and consequences, as Sir William Cecil at all times proved himself to be, must have fore-
seen all these civil and political advantages as likely to flow, from a resumption of the cause of
the Reformation, as soon as he was at all able to give efficient advice to the Crown.
VOL. II. K
66 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1589.
lation of which a full account may be seen in our first volume, that it might be
ready to be brought into use again, as soon as ever the people could be
properly prepared to receive it ; this seems to have been estimated to require
as much as seven months, or five at the least, after the meeting of Parliament,
the latter having met on the 25th of January, and the revival of Edward's
Prayer-Book being fixed for the 24th of June following. This gave time for
the Convocation freely to declare its opinion on its five memorable Articles ; it
gave time for the passing of many acts repugnant to the authority of the Pope,
particularly the act of supremacy ;* for the revival of many statutes of Henry
and Edward,t which had been repealed by Mary, and it gave time for the
proposed conference and disputation between the Popish and Reformed divines,
which may be regarded as an answer to the five Romish Articles promulgated
by the Convocation.^. Two things may be said to have restored things to
their old footing, as between Papists and Protestants. First, the Conference
alluded to, which gave a fair triumph to the latter ; and secondly, the tender
of the oath of supremacy, as soon as the acts for the revival of the liturgy
came into operation, which had the effect of disqualifying some ecclesiastics,
though not more, as has been asserted, than 200 out of 9400 who held
spiritual promotions or preferment ; among these, however, were the principal
dignitaries, bishops, and abbots, who had hitherto retained their seats in
Parliament, and had been allowed to protest against what they could not
be brought to approve ; fourteen bishops and one or more abbots refused the
oath. Those who took it, could scarcely be regarded as proper ministers,
under the changes projected ; but there was no immediate remedy ; a public
test had been supplied, and a very large proportion submitted to it, partly, as it
has been thought, to keep the Protestants out of their churches. — See Camden.
* Strype's Annals, i. 160. In discarding again the authority of the Pope, it is well known,
that the Prayer in the Liturgy, to be delivered " from the Bishop of Rome, and all his detestable
enormities," was properly and discreetly expunged.
t There was no possibility of getting the Queen to assent to the marriage of the clergy,
allowed by Edward. This put the clergy who were already married to considerable difficulty in
getting their children legitimated. — See Annals, i. 118. The monasteries erected by Mary, were
of course suppressed.
J Of King Edward's Liturgy, we have, as is before observed, given an account in our first
volume ; of the differences between the one now laid before the Parliament, and King Edward's
second book, a statement is to be seen in Collier's Records, Vol. ii. No. LXXVIL, see also the
notes to Mr. Hallam's Constitutional History of England, p. 119, 120.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD PURGHLEY. 67
The feeling of the nation at large, and the actual situation of the Church, were
left to be investigated by chosen Commissioners, sent out by the Queen as her
representatives, or administrators of her ecclesiastical supremacy ; particular
circuits being severally assigned to them, in which they were to make their
inquiries, establish what was right, and redress whatever should appear to
them to be wrong. In this Commission, Sir William Cecil appears to have
been associated (July 22, 1559), with the Marquess of Northampton, the Earl
of Rutland, the Earl of Huntingdon, and other nobles ; his friend and country-
man, Sir Ambrose Cave, and divers Knights and Esquires ; and the district
assigned to them, included the dioceses of Oxford, Lincoln, Peterborough,
Coventry and Lichfield. He was also joined in another Commission with
Parker, Bill, and other eminent divines, to visit Eton College, and the University
of Cambridge. An account of the Book of Articles to be inquired of, and of the
Interrogatories and Inquiries adopted, may be seen in Strype's Annals, ch. xii.
under the year 1559, where also a report is made of the course and effect of
these visitations.
Though objections were made at the time, and have been made since, to this
delegacy of the royal power, many grave authors have admitted that it did
much good, and brought forward the reformed religion very considerably
throughout the nation ; the want of able ministers was nevertheless severely
felt, and led to the admission into the Church, of some of very inferior callings ;
but yet not so bad as those whose places they were called to occupy, as
Calfhil maintained in his book against Marshal: " Grant," says he, " that the
inferior sort of our ministers were such indeed as our enemies object, such as
came from the shop, from the forge, from the wherry, and from the loom ;
should you not think you find more sincerity and learning in them, than in all
the rabble of popish chaplains, their mass-mongers, and their soul-priests."
The language is certainly not polite, but his conclusion shews that he was
thinking gravely upon the subject. " I lament," says he, " that there are not
so many good preachers as parishes, I am sorry that some so unskilful are
preferred : but I never saw the simple reader admitted into our Church, but in
the time of popery ye should have found in every diocese forty Sir Johns in
every respect worse."
The vacancies on the Episcopal bench, by death, or removal of those who
refused the oath of supremacy, might have occasioned great embarrassments, if
the Queen had been reduced to the advice of any persons less acquainted
08 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
with the history of past times, than Sir William Cecil* and his brother-in-law
the Lord Keeper. Fortunately, their early connexion with the University of
Cambridge, had given them a knowledge of the talents and characters of
persons fitted for the new ministry, exceeding perhaps the experience of any
other persons, not only in the court, but in the realm. We find the Queen
accordingly ready to submit to the exclusive choice and judgment of these two
brothers the important task of nominating a Primate ; an appointment vacant
from the day of the decease of the Cardinal Pole.
The choice of the two brothers was soon brought to concur, in fixing upon their
old Cambridge associate and friend, Matthew Parker, of whom we have already
found much to say in our first volume ; he was not indeed so exactly a con-
temporary, as their great intimacy might seem to shew, being at the least sixteen
years older than the Secretary, and by some years senior to the Lord Keeper, but
the revival of learning at both Universities, had associated persons of all stand-
ings in the same studies ; and Parker, Bacon, and Cecil, stand commemorated
in the antiquities of Cambridge, as bound together in the strictest bonds of
friendship. — See our former volume, p. 52. Sir John Cheke also was intimately
acquainted with him, and is supposed to have stood godfather to his eldest son
JOHN. The object of these great statesmen in their selection of a new Metro-
politan, we are told, was to provide such a person for Archbishop, as mio-ht
govern his province with discretion and moderation, abolish Popery, and
promote the spread of the Gospel ; yet not by methods of severity, but by per-
suasion rather than force.
At the time of the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Dr. Parker was living in all
the obscurity to which he had been reduced, by the revolution of affairs under
Mary, and we may well conceive from the character of .the man, that he was
much more prepared to shun, than court an appointment of such extraordinary
importance and responsibility ; and we have every fair testimony to prove that
it really was so. Of his competency to fill the office there could be little doubt,
The delay in making new appointments appears to have given Cecil much concern. " Here
hath been great slackness," he writes to Throckmorton at Paris, July 9, 1559, " in appointing of
Bishops, and as yet continued ; it will do much hurt for regyment. All parties be quiet, but the
cathedral-churches be void of church service ; upon visitation it shall amend I trust."— Forbes,
i. 156. This remark seems to exonerate the Secretary from being one of the instruments for
keeping the sees open, to afford the Crown the better opportunity of seizing upon the temporal-
ties.— See Collier, ii. 437.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 69
if the misgivings of his own mind could have been speedily overcome ; his past
life had in truth fitted him for it in every way possible, he had been chaplain to
Queen Anne Boleyn, the mother of Elizabeth, and to Henry VIII., her father.
After Queen Anne's decease, he had been Master of Ben'et College, Vice-
Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, under Gardiner, of whose imperious
temper he had had many striking proofs ; he had been Dean of Lincoln, and a
favourite preacher both at Court and at Paul's Cross in Edward's reign. He had
been the friend ofBucer, Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley; and though dispossessed
of all his preferment under Mary; no Refugee; — he had, as well as Cecil himself
and the Lord Keeper Bacon, escaped the torrent of the Marian persecution, re-
signed to the will of Providence, in the patient surrender of all the preferments he
held in the Church ; and having availed himself of the permission granted to the
clergy by the laws of Edward, to enter into the bonds of matrimony, he married
into a family devoted to Protestantism,* and under the cloud in which he lay
with regard to the Court, passed his days in privacy and retirement, most
contentedly, as he tells us himself, with his wife (a woman of high character),
and his children. Great must have been the change contemplated. Strype well
observes ; "from being a poor, obscure, absconding, and persecuted clergyman,
to be advanced to the very top of ecclesiastical honour and trust in the English
Church ;" but his reluctancy to take such a charge upon him, appears, from the
letters that passed between himself and his two great friends, to have been most
unfeigned. They may be seen in Strype, printed from MSS. not yet destroyed,
or likely to be lost.
Though the second year of the Queen's reign had commenced, before the
new Primate was actually consecrated, as will be shewn hereafter, yet it appears
to have been in the month of August 1559, that after several ineffectual and
earnest remonstrances he consented to receive the appointment at the Queen's
express desire; from which time he seems, as one admirably skilled in all
ecclesiastical rites and usages, to have been consulted by the Secretary upon
every point relating to the settlement of the Church, and particularly in the
first instance, as to the filling the many sees and other places and preferments
then vacant.
In the Xllth chapter of Strype's Annals of the Reformation, may be seen a
transcript from the Secretary's own papers, not only of the void bishoprics,
* Harlestone.
7(J MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
dignities and benefices, but of the names of sundry persons without promotion,
worthy to be preferred and appointed to the several vacancies. From this paper
it appears that eight or more bishops were dead, six deprived* ten living and
not yet deprived, and that there were besides various prebends, benefices, and at
the least one deanery to be filled up ; nor was it alone necessary to consider who
should be elevated to the bench in the room of the deceased or deprived prelates,
but the mode of doing so, had from the peculiar circumstances of the moment
no small difficulty in it. The want of an Archbishop alone threw things much
out of course, and the attention paid to the subject by the Secretary in con-
junction with Dr. Parker, is very striking ; a body of instructions was drawn up
by the latter, which also is still extant, with the marginal remarks of Cecil, from
which it appears, that upon the question, whether the Popish Ordinal should be
used, or that of King Edward VI. which had been abrogated by Mary, Cecil had
scruples in his mind, in consequence of the latter not having yet received any
fresh parliamentary sanction. Parker also evinced a great desire to do what he
could to guard against any further spoliation or alienation of episcopal property,
by bringing the new bishops under an express obligation, not to injure their
successors, or impair the estates by long leases, improper grants, or felling of
* The Emperor having written to the Queen in behalf of the Popish Bishops, and desiring to
have churches set apart for the Papists in all cities and chief towns of the realm, he was
answered, that the Popish Bishops, had opposed the laws, and did still wilfully reject and impugn
the doctrine, which during King Henry and King Edward's reign they had publicly owned
and declared, and notwithstanding their great cruelty to the poor reformed Protestants in her
sister's reign, she would yet deal favourably with them ; but as to assigning churches to them, it
would be to act contrary to the laws now established by Parliament, to cherish factions, distract
men's minds, and disturb the Commonwealth. England had adopted no new or strange doctrine,
but simply returned to that professed by the primitive and Catholic Church, and approved by
the Fathers.
On the deprivation of Boner, the see of London was conferred on Dr. Edmund Grindal, to
whom the Secretary had always been a cordial and constant friend, as Strype has observed : they
were more nearly of an age, than Parker and Cecil ; Grindal having been born in the year 1519,
his acquaintance with Cecil had also begun at Cambridge, where, to refer again to Strype, he was
accounted " one of the wisest wits and learnedest men In the place." He had been Chaplain to
Ridley, with whom he was a great favourite, as we had occasion to notice in our first volume,
p. 381. During his retirement abroad he was assistant to Fox in collecting materials for his great
work on the persecutions of the Church, in which he has the credit given him, of being scrupu-
lously attentive to the truth of the facts reported to him ; but as his whole history has been written
by Strype, we need not go farther into these particulars, having more to say of him hereafter.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 7.1
timber except for repairs, in which indeed (though one clause * rendered it at
first very imperfect) we may trace the original of those wholesome restraining
statutes, which may be said to be still in operation to the protection, preservation,
and permanent security of all scholastic, collegiate, and eleemosynary property.
In conjunction with such other Bishops as were already nominated and elect,t
the new Archbishop exerted himself also strenuously with the Queen, to stay
proceedings upon the extraordinary statute which had been passed, to empower
her on any vacancies, to take such portions of the temporal revenues of the
several sees, as she might choose into her own hands, in exchange for church
lands, impropriations, tenths, &c. After what had passed since the beginning
of the Reformation in King Henry's days, it was easy to see to what purposes
this tended ; to supply in short, not the Crown only, but through the Crown, the
Courtiers with lordships and manors, in lieu of ecclesiastical property burthened
generally with many charges. — The whole proceedings may be seen in Strype's
Life of the Archbishop, exhibiting an excellent specimen of the new Primate's
honest boldness, his admirable knowledge of the subject, and his zealous concern
for learning and religion.
But there were no parts of the kingdom that required more immediate atten-
tion than the two Universities ; and here it is remarkable, that he who had been
Vice Chancellor of Cambridge, under Gardiner, should now have a Chancellor
there so much after his own heart to deal with ; for before Elizabeth had sat
three months on her throne that high appointment had been tendered to the Secre-
tary himself ; who, though rather anxious to decline it at first, held it for many
years, with great honour to himself, and benefit to the place. * Had he received
* The Crown was made an exception. The Bishops were to be barred making such grants,
unless it were to the Queen, her heirs and successors. — See Collier, ii. 430.
f Strype's Life of Grindal, Ann. 1559, 1560.
J The Letter written by the Secretary to the Vice Chancellor, in acknowledgment of the ho-
nour conferred on him, is to the following effect. See Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, Vol. i. Book vii.
Numerus IX.
Gulielmi Cecilii, academies Cantabrigiensi ; qua gratias eis omnibus agit ob corum magnam
erga eum benevolentiam, cum ipsum officio Canccllarii alms ejusdem acadernise fungi precati
essent. Dat. 19 Feb. 1558.
E Codice MS. penes. — Rogerum Gale. " Non vacat mihi, sicut maxime vellem, literis vestris
respondere. Quamobrem, sicut ego vobis paucissimis respondere cogor, ita vos vicissim eahuma-
nlssime interpretari debetis. Munus hoc vestrum quod mihi detulistis, sicut vobis est ad donandum
maximum, ita mihi homini in hoc ordine in quo positus sum prope infimo. ad recipicndum sane
72 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
this appointment in the zenith of his glory, when loaded with honours, and Lord
High Treasurer of the kingdom, it might not appear a matter at all out of course,
but in the very critical state of things at this time, three months only after Mary's
death and Elizabeth's accession, while he was yet under forty years of age, and
for the last five years, rather under a cloud than otherwise, the choice of the Uni-
versity speaks great things. First, the high respect borne to him, by a society of
such discernment, upon an acquaintance not of present but of former years ; in
the times of Henry and Edward, if not also of Mary. It bespeaks a coincidence
of feeling in that learned body, with regard to the religious principles of the new
Sovereign, and the Secretary's design and purposes of restoring the Protestant
faith. It bespeaks a strong sense both of the public and private character of
the new Chancellor, a confidence in his talents and disposition to promote the
interests of the University, and an approval of his conduct in all preceding cir-
cumstances. We have given an account, in our first volume, of the extraordi-
nary state of the world, and of England particularly, at the period of Sir William's
entrance at St. John's College, when Gardiner bore rule, and would fain have
opposed all the efforts of the patrons of the new learning, to improve the condition
of the University, particularly Sir William and Dr. Parker's two great friends,
Chefce and Smith ; and now we see two of the greatest promoters of that new
learning, after a temporary depression, the one Chancellor of his favourite Uni-
difficillimum ; itaque quid in hac re statuam, estquod magnopere dubitem. Etenim, cum vestrorum
omnium tarn Concordes in me animos; cum officii munerisque dignitatem cogito ; magno mihi
solatio esse videri posset, petition! huic vestree acquiescere.
Cum vero contra, fortunam meam, sane mediocrem, ac facultatem etiam pene nullam, intueor;
concedere hoc vobis quod a me postulatis, nonnibil certe erubesco. Breviter enim mei usum vobis
libenter concede, ut,in omnibus vestri negotiis.meo in persequendis labore.acin perficiendis etiam
voluntate, uti possitis. Atque hoc quidem me raonet officii hujus singularis queedam dignitas a
vobis postulare, ut huic officio tarn prseclaro et honorando me precstantiorem velitis praficere ;
qui eandem possit, propter summam ejus authoritatem, quam optime tueri.
Ego vero interim vestras causas, tanquam e vestro grege unus, et fideliter procurabo, et eisdem
studebo etiam diligentissime.
Quid vos in hac causa tandem decernatis, cum priorum intellexero, facile perspicietis me non
tarn prolixe me vobis, in literis meis, de studio ac voluntate mea pollicitum esse, quam paratum
me prsebebo, ad liberaliter, cumulateque pra>standum.
Multam fcelicitatem, cum summo Deihonore, vobis ex animo precor. bene valete; ex aula, decimo
nono Februarii MDLVIII. vestrse dignitatis ac salutis studiosissimus,
GUL. CECILIUS.
Procancellario ac senatui Cantabrigiensi longe celeberrimo.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 73
versity, the other Primate and Metropolitan of all England.* It is no wonder,
that, seeing these things, the adherents of Popery should take the alarm under
an apprehension and foresight of the changes about to take place ; many of the
Popish heads of Colleges, as secretly reported first to Parker, and by Parker to
the new Chancellor, had already begun it seems to provide for themselves, in case
of ejectment, out of the College revenues ; to grant long leases, and levy exorbi-
tant fines, to the detriment of their successors and College tenants, and to take
other measures calling for a speedy redress. These things induced Parker to
move the Secretary, to inquire early into the exact state of the Colleges, after the
pattern of Gardiner in Queen Mary's days; and the better to assist him he sup-
plied him with copies of all the letters, &c. that had passed upon the latter occa-
sion, which letters may be seen in Strype.f A visitation of Cambridge was soon
therefore set on foot, and, to copy Strype, " the visitors consisted of two learned
Knights, SIR WILLIAM CECIL and Sir Anthony Cook; two Doctors of Divi-
nity, Dr. PARKER and William Bill; two Doctors of the Civil Law, William
May and Walter Haddon ; one Doctor of Physic, Dr. Wendy; and two Profes-
sors of Divinity (as they are styled), Robert Horn and James Pilkington : all
persons of great integrity and learning, and that had formerly been members of
the said University."
In the mean while no small embarrassment arose, as might reasonably be
expected, from the want of unanimity among the Reformists. The Protestants
themselves were divided into parties, and severally attached to doctrines and
peculiarities in discipline, more of foreign than of English growth. No sooner
was it known abroad, that the reign of Mary was terminated, and Elizabeth
advanced to the throne, than the refugees from all parts and places, Zurich,
Frankfort, Strasburgh, Basil, Wormes, Arrow, fyc. became impatient to return ;
efforts were made first to reconcile the differences that had hitherto divided
them, but in vain ; many returned with all their German prejudices about them,
and as many with those that had prevailed in Switzerland. The former were
for reducing matters to the model of the Lutheran Church, the latter to that
of Geneva : the former stood ready with their Augustan Confession, which
was held in some points to savour largely of Popery ;£ the latter were for
* The Lord Keeper Bacon might of course be added. t Life of Parker, 82 — 85.
J The Lutheran Church encouraged the use of altars, and the elevation of the Sacrament,
See Collier, ii. 434. see also Strype, dnnals, vol. i. 76.
VOL. II. L
74 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
introducing the Genevan discipline, which bore hard upon Episcopacy. The
Lutherans had indeed discarded transubstantiation, or the change of the
elements in the Eucharist into the very body and blood of Jesus Christ, but
they admitted consubstantiation, which was so like it, with regard to certain
consequences, that the Genevans could never be brought to assent to it, while
in discarding Episcopacy (which was no part of their discipline), and in
quarrelling about habits, ceremonies, &c. they seemed evidently disposed to
trench upon the liberty of such, as from the Scriptures, and the ancient
Fathers, considered episcopal government to be of Divine origin,* and habits
and ceremonies, a8ia<^opo or indifferents.
The Genevans, however, it may be observed, were willing to admit of King
Edward's Reformation, sooner than have the Augustan Confession adopted, as may
be seen by a letter still in existence, from Bullinger to Utenhovius, then at Frank-
fort (but in Edward's reign of the Dutch church in London), in which he laments
the endeavours making to establish the Church of England on the Augustan Con-
fession, and assuring him, that King Edward's Reformation satisfied the godly,
that is, the Swiss congregation. f The Papists also were not displeased to see
* Whoever would wish to see the sum of the testimony of the ancient Fathers to the fact of
Episcopacy being the established government of the primitive Church, may consult Mr. Faber's
Difficulties of Romanism, published in 1826, book ii. ch. 1. or Leslie's admirable discourse on
the qualifications necessary to administer the Sacraments, with the supplement, in which all the
citations from the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, may be seen at length. The Genevans, to do
them justice, looked to the hierarchy as having remaining in it the seeds of Popery, such as they
thought might facilitate a return to that exploded system ; but the Reformed Bishops gave early
security against any such dangers, by their able defence of the Church of England, and their
jealousy of all foreign jurisdiction and interference, nor indeed were the Bishops under the
Popish system by any means upon good terms with the Pope ; the latter generally relying upon
the monks, whom they had exempted from subjection to the Bishops, as a counterpoise against
the latter. " One thing proposed as a ground of our Reformation," says a learned writer upon
the subject, " was the retrieving the original rights of Bishops, which the Bishop of Rome
had injuriously invaded, whilst he challenged the whole power of governing the Catholic
Church, and making the Bishops only his curates."— Barwick on the Church, Belfast, 1813,
2d Edit. This author, in reply to those who were disposed to regard Episcopacy as a relic
of Popery, observes, " This indeed is so far from being true, that I look on Episcopal Govern-
ment as the best way to keep out Popery."— P. 80.
t This is certainly very remarkable, because during the Frankfort troubles, in the last reign,
when Calvin had been applied to, to say what he thought of Edward's Liturgy, he found -many
faults in it, and thereby produced the schism in Germany, between those who were for making
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 75
some alterations made in the book of Common Prayer, and some resistance to
the too rigid discipline of Geneva ; so that, upon the petition against the Pope, in
Edward's litany, being thrown out ; on the sacerdotal dresses being, in some mea-
sure retained, and music admitted in the church solemnities, many shewed them-
selves not averse from joining in communion with the national church, and which,
for the first ten years of the Queen's reign, they frequently attended. All this
while, it should be considered, that upon the very principles of the Reformation,
the Church of England was under no obligation to conform entirely to either
party. She was equally at liberty to reject the authority of the Pope ; to adopt
so much only of the Augustan Confession as she might judge to be entirely con-
sonant to the Scriptures ; and to retain Episcopacy, as already sanctioned by the
national church, upon what was supposed to be sacred or apostolical authority.
The system she had to adopt might reasonably be regarded as an eclectic system,*
conformable in some measure to all, but no farther than the Scriptures, carefully
examined and interpreted, might seem to warrant ; and she had patterns to refer
to at home. Had all the Marian exiles, when abroad, adhered to Edward's Re-
formation, no difficulties would have ensued from their return, but the disputes
at Frankfort, among the exiles themselves, in the year 1556, plainly shewed that
the English system stood a chance of being sacrificed for one of foreign growth.
Edward's Reformation the standard of belief for all the English exiles (Bishop Cox, the tutor of
King Edward VI. being at the head of them) ; and those who did not hesitate to conform them-
selves rather to the Helvetian system, as Knox, Fox, &c., which, according to Neal, was the proper
origin of Puritanism. Sir William CeciFs designs were evidently only to revive and restore Ed-
ward's Reformation, as Bullinger called it ; he could therefore be no favourer of Calvin's objec-
tions or party. This is a material circumstance.
* When, 011 the Queen's accession, the exiles at Geneva wrote to those at Frankfort to propose
a reconciliation, and the former seemed still sore upon the subject of habits and ceremonies, it wag
very wisely and sensibly answered by the German exiles, that "as for ceremonies, the settling
that point must neither be referred to the churches of Frankfort nor Geneva. The divines in
England, with the concurrence of the Parliament, must put an end to that controversy. They hope
the Reformation will recover and not be clogged with an over-weight of ceremonies, and therefore,
provided nothing immoral is imposed, they are resolved to acquiesce in the public establishment, and
wish their brethren of Geneva may be equally resigning ; and since all the Reformed abroad differ
in rites, and yet agree in doctrine, they see no reason why the English church may not be allowed
the same latitude." — Collier, ii. 412. See also the address of the Germans to the English church,
entitled Germanice ad Angliam restitutd Evangelii luce gratitlatio, in Strype's Annals, i. 156. and
P. 161, Humphrey's tract, de Religionis conservation et reformatione Terd, very applicable to the
designs of the new government.
76 MEMOIRS OF LORD BU11GHLEY. [1559.
Cox interposed to prevent the secession, but in vain. For though he disturbed
the seceding congregation at Frankfort, the dispersed members continued Cal-
vinists.
The Secretary had to steer his course between all these parties; to keep all in
good humour as far as he could, and to receive their secret representations and
remonstrances, as the course of things might seem to affect them severally. Such
communications may be said to have poured in upon him from all quarters, and
to a degree scarcely credible, but by those who have been in the way to examine
the contents of our several public libraries, and repositories (or merely the
catalogues of the MSS. therein); and what began in the first year of the
Queen's reign, seems to have continued with little intermission to the very
end of his long and laborious life.
But it was impossible to keep the affairs of the Church clear of politics ;
the Reformation in all parts, had a bearing upon the civil as well as the
ecclesiastical concerns of every state where it obtained a footing. England,
at the time of Mary's death, having no ally but Philip (the CATHOLIC King,
as his Ambassador in England took great care constantly to call him, espe-
cially in presence of the Queen, hoping thereby to deter her from any changes
in the religion of the country), the Secretary very naturally looked to the
PROTESTANT Princes of Germany, and, as we have before intimated, through
lue celebrated agent Mount, lost no time in sounding them, as to the support
and assistance they might be disposed to afford the new Queen, and consulting
them even as to the marriage of the latter, if such a bond of alliance could be
suggested. The Princes were ready to receive the Queen into the Smalcaldic
league, if she would carry on the 'Reformation upon their model, and they pro-
posed as a match for Elizabeth, the very Archduke Charles, of whom we have
before spoken.
But while the Secretary was thus seeking a Protestant alliance (and we may
add an Anti-Gallican alliance), as more suitable to the views of the Queen in
regard to religion, the Helvetian divines became jealous of the advances he
seemed to be making towards the Lutherans, and were by no means satisfied with
the first appearances of things on their return from their voluntary exile.* We
* Knox had done the exiles from Geneva no small injury by his imprudent book against " the
monstrous regiment and empire of Women ;" originally aimed at Mary of England, and Mary of
Lorrain, but Elizabeth's accession naturally altered the case, and Knox tried to get out of the
scrape ; though rather awkwardly, as may be seen by his letters to Secretary Cecil and to the
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 77
have much of very curious information upon this head preserved in the letters
of the celebrated Bishop Jewel, who was among the first to return ; they are
chiefly addressed to Peter Martyr, the very person to whom the jeturned exiles
seem to have generally applied for counsel and Advice ; and with reason,
as he had borne so great a share in the revolutions of the preceding reigns.
The letters are of course all written in Latin, and we shall therefore only extract
a few passages, as particularly explanatory of the state of things in the first year
of the Queen's reign, as they appeared to this justly eminent and amiable
divine ; he was certainly, it must be confessed, more in a hurry, than accorded
with the cautious proceedings of the Queen and her Council.
His first letter is dated from Strasburgh, and gives an account of the departure
of Sandys and Horn, and the favourable reception the Queen gave them on their
arrival in England,* of the paucity of Bishops, fourteen sees being by that time,
in all likelihood, vacant. He notices White's intemperate sermon at Mary's
funeral, and the Queen's inhibition of the preachers, Romish and Reformed,
for which different reasons had been assigned.
His next letter written to Peter Martyr, March 29, 1559, after his own arrival
in England, expresses the great disappointment he felt, at first, to find every
thing as it was, still in the hands of the Papists ; the Pope's authority still
allowed ; no return to the reformed doctrines or discipline, masses in abundance,
the same pomp and insolence on the part of the Popish Bishops. " Nondum
enim ejectus erat Romanus pontifex ; nondum pars ulla Religionis restituta ;
eadem erat ubique missarum proluvies, eadem pompa et insolentia Episcoporum."
But things were beginning to get better and to mend rapidly. " Ista tamen
omnia nunc tandem mutare incipiunt et pene ruere." Still he complains largely
of the conduct and power of the Bishops in Parliament : i. e. the Romish
Bishops who still sat in the House of Lords. " Magno nobis impedi-
mento sunt Episcopi :" and he laments that there should be none there capable
Queen. — Strype's Annals, i. 178, 179. Knox was ably answered by jElmer (Aylmer), afterwards
Bishop of London, ib. 181. See, for an account of his book, the Life of the Bishop by Strype,
ch. xii. — it was written while he was yet an exile, and printed at Strasburgh, 1559.
* He might have added Grindal as among the first to return ; during Mary's reign there can be
no doubt but that many kept their eyes upon the exiles abroad, to whose necessities they admi-
nistered, in a private and secret manner, and chiefly through the hands of Grindal. — See Strype's
Life of that Prelate, p. 30. The exiles in general appear to have come home upon some tfcret
intimations, to use Strype'g own words, of a renewal of the Reformation.
78 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
of answering them; " qui illorum fucos et mendacia possit, coram dicendo refu-
tare," is his strong expression ; as we have noticed these speeches before, given
them such credit as they deserve, and accounted for their receiving no answers,
the subjects discussed being beyond the reading and knowledge of the temporal
lords, and no Protestant Bishops having yet obtained seats in the House ; we
shall only observe, that the term mendacia, is most applicable to the speech of
Feckenham, who had grossly slandered and misrepresented some of the early
Reformers, both foreign and English, but of the latter, very particularly Cranmer
and Ridley.
The Queen, he goes on to remark, openly favoured their cause, but was
checked and hindered, partly by her own Council, and partly by the endeavours
of the Spanish minister, " Comite Terio," (probably the Conde de Feria), to
prevent any innovations ; he still gives her credit, and consequently her Council,
for proceeding prudently, resolutely, and piously. " Ilia tamen quamvis lentius
aliquanto quam NOS velimus, tamen et prudenter, et fortiter et pie persequitur
institutum."
He next notices the appointed disputation between the Popish and Protes-
tant Divines, and gives so good a reason for it, that we cannot avoid transcribing
it. " Interea ne Episcopi nostri queri possint se potentia tantum, et lege esse
victos, res revocata est in disputat ionem ;" i. e. Lest the Bishops (Popish
Bishops) should complain or allege, that they had been violently or by mere
force of law, subdued, &c. — In this letter he gives a sad account of the conduct
and behaviour of certain of the Popish Prelates or Dignitaries, ending with
Western (the Prolocutor of the Convocation, when Cranmer, Ridley, and
Latimer were so roughly handled at Oxford, and so cruelly condemned),
who was actually put out of his preferments, for his horrible licentiousness.*
"De Westono audisti antea, sed quid istos, inquies commemores? ut intelligas
quibus judicibus oportuerit B. Cranmerum, P. Ridlaeum, P. Latimerum con-
dernnari."
In a letter to Bullinger, May 22, 1559, he deplores the wretched state of the
Universities, particularly Oxford, where "vix duo," scarcely two, he thinks,
could be found to favour their cause, so much had the place been corrupted by
* Weston was in the Tower when Elizabeth first came to London from Hatfield, and obliged
to be removed, for her accommodation, to the Savoy, where he shortly after died. — See as to this
man, and all the proceedings against Cranmer, &c. our first volume.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 79
Spanish Friars.* To Peter Martyr again, April 6, 1559, he writ a long account
of the disputation in which he himself bore a conspicuous part, and which he
says, was intended to have been conducted with as much solemnity as possible,
before the Privy Council, and members of both houses of Parliament, but which
the extreme anger, intemperance, and unreasonable objections of the papistical
party, had caused to be brought to a premature termination ; not however before
the Reformists had, by the almost general consent of the assembly, obtained a
notable victory, by the reading of Horn's paper, and he mentions particularly the
Earl of Shrewsbury who had readily acknowledged this. " Postremo ita dimissa
est disputatio ut vix quisquam esset, in toto illo conventu, ne Comes quidem
Salopiensis, quin Victoriam illius diei adjudicaret nobis." He also observes to
his learned correspondent, that it was almost incredible how much the conduct
of this disputation had lessened, in the opinion of the people, the fame and credit
of the Popish Bishops.
In August 1559, nine months after the Queen's accession, he writes in
better spirits to Peter Martyr — " Res nostrse satis nunc sunt in proclivi—
Regina optime animatur; Populus ubique sitiens religionis." This, it should
be observed, was after the English Service Rook had been restored to the
churches-t He speaks as promisingly of Scotland, though with less mode-
ration than we could wish, and with but little foresight of the protracted
struggle she had yet to undergo. "Monasteria passim omnia aequantur solo,
vestes Scenicse, calices sacrilegi, idola, altaria comburuntur; ne vestigia quidem
prises; superstitionis et idolatriae relinquuntur." He informs him that several of
the vacant sees had been filled up, himself " minimus apostolorum," as he
modestly speaks, being nominated and chosen Bishop of Salisbury. He
mentions the peace concluded with France, and the shuffling engagement to
* The early choice of Sir William Cecil to be Chancellor of Cambridge, bespeaks a different
state of things there, though I have seen the passage so cited as to affect both Universities; while
it is extremely certain, that in the original the vix duo are particularly restrained to Oxford. — Com-
pare Strype's Annals, i. Records, no. xx. p. 490, with the Vindication of the Church established
by Elizabeth, p. 16, note. — In the latter instance the important word " Oxonix" is actually left
out, at which we are the more surprised, because that book being written in reply to Neal, we
find it to be a remark of the latter, even under the year 1563, that things were so bad at Oxford,
that only three Protestant preachers were to be found there, and they were all Puritans.
f St. John Baptist's day, viz. June 24, was the day fixed for the English service to begin, but
it appears to have been performed earlier in the Queen's Chapel, May 12, and June 6, at Wind-
sor, at St. George's feast ; at St. Paul's also on St. Barnabas' day, June 11.
80
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
surrender Calais in eight years. He notices the Queen's objection to be called
the Head of Church, which he acknowledges gave him no displeasure.* He
announces the safe arrival of a book of Peter Martyr's sent as a present to the
Queen, and which he tells him had been duly presented to her Majesty by Sir
William Cecil, " redditus est a D. Ctftilio." He mentions in a letter, November
5, 1559, how much the Queen asked about him (Peter Martyr), and seemed
desirous of having him in England ;f and on the 1 5th of November, the last day
but one of the first year of the Queen's reign, he repeats, how much, and by how
many, his presence was desired, though the state of affairs was so unsettled that
he could not urge him to be in any haste to come. Lastly, in the same letter,
he notices the favourable disposition of the Secretary towards them ; "C/ECiLius
causae nostrse impense favit."
We have not particularly noticed one great trait of Sir William's statesmanly
talents, displayed in this very first year of the Queen's reign, we mean the
amendment of the coin. We have in our former volume given an account of the
extraordinary depreciations it underwent in the reigns of Henry, Edward, and
Mary ; it belonged to Sir William Cecil, to bring it to a standard of purity and
perfection, which may be said t.n have cast a lustre on the whole reign of his
prudent and wise Sovereign. In his Life by a Domestic, we have the following
account of his principles and opinions, regarding this great point of political
economy ; and as it is accompanied with a short summary of his ministerial
labours during this first and ensuing year of the Queen's reign, we shall tran-
scribe it at length, with Mr. Peck's additions, corrections, or emendations.^
* The oath of Supremacy had been misconstrued, as if it claimed for the Sovereign a power of
ministry in the Church. This the Queen was anxious to clear up, and make it understood, that
she claimed no more, than " under God to have the sovereignty and rule over all manner of
persons born within these realms, dominions, and countries, either ecclesiastical or temporal, so
as no foreign power ought to have any superiority over them."— Collier, ii. 433. In the Queen's
Injunctions, set forth in 1559, an explanatory clause was introduced to the above effect, as we
before observed. These Injunctions, framed probably by the select company of divines employed
about the Liturgy, were reviewed, and in some instances corrected by Cecil's own hand.
t Peter Martyr was at this time rather angry with the Queen, as may be seen in Strype's Life
ofGfindal,48. He had written to her, it seems, twice, but his letters had no notice" taken of
them; he was offended with her for leaning towards the Augustan Confession, which was likely
to encourage her in setting up the Crucifix ; which the exiles from Geneva heartily wished her
to lay aside.— See how much stress was laid upon this in Jewel's, Sandys' and Sampson's letters,
Burnet, iii. part ii. Nos. 60, 61, 63.
t His notes from Stone and Holinshed should be consulted.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 81
" After he had endeavoured to bring the health of the soule" (alluding to the
disputations by which the cause of Protestantism was so much advanced), " he
next laboured for the wealth of the state, for by his pollitique advice, the coigne
and mony's of the realme were brought to the standard of fyneness now currant
in England, from the former baseness ; beinge nowe one of the richest coins of
the world : to the great inriching of this realm and Commonwealth.*
" For he held a position (which undoubtedly is true) viz. that, ' That realme
cannot be rich whose coin is poore or base.' And he would alsi» saie, ' Opor-
tet Patrem familias mag is esse vendacem quam emacem." [That a prince ought
rather to be a seller, than a buyer, seeing] that realme must needs be poore, that
carrieth not out more than it bringeth in."
Speaking next of his mission to Scotland, to procure a peace, of which we
shall soon have to give an account, and of his general disposition to avoid war,
whenever it could be safely and honourably avoided, the author thus sums
up the three great points to which Sir William's attention was primarily, and
with such good success, directed.
* " To Queen Elizabeth it is to be ascribed," says Camden, "that there hath been better and
purer money in England than was seen in two hundred years before, or hath been elsewhere in
use throughout all Europe." — " This certainly was a great and memorable act, which neither King
Edward the Sixth could, nor Queen Mary durst do, after that King Henry VIII. had first of all
the Kings of England, mixed the money with brass, to the great dishonour of the kingdom, and
the damage of his successors and people." In our first volume, Ch. xxix. pp. 397, 8. we have
touched upon this subject as far as regarded the reigns of Henry and Edward ; in the 5th year of
the reign of the latter, the debasement of our money appears to have reached its lowest point. As
Lord Burghley was then in place, and highly conversant with the subject, we maybe sure that what
he did so soon for his present Sovereign, in conformity to his own maxim, he would have done for
Edward, had his power then been equal to his will ; it is a strong proof indeed of the rapacity of
those, who may be said to have usurped the reins of government, we mean Northumberland and
his party, and with them the blame should rest. How soon after Elizabeth's accession, the pro-
ject was set in motion for amending the coin, we may judge from the Lord Paget's letter to Sir
Thomas Parry and the Secretary, to be seen in Haynes, sent with two devices or plans for the
new coinage, and in which he observes, " If the Queen's Majesty amend the coin universally,
there shall grow thereby great commodity to her and the realm ; and also the greatest honour and
reputation in the world, that ever came, not only to any Princess, but at any time to any King of
this.realm." This letter is dated on the 3d of February, 1558, three months only after the acces-
sion. From Lord Burghley's own notes, it would appear to have been about the 29th of May,
1561, that the business of the mint was completed : " May 29th, Base monies decryed, and fine
silver coined." — See also Strypes Annals, \. 395-6. " Though Elizabeth restored the standard,
she sometimes reduced the weight of the currency, and was only prevented making greater
changes, by the firmness and sagacity of Lord Burghley." — See Edinburgh Review, No. xiv.
VOL. II. M
82 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1559.
" Of which three last points, viz. The alteration of religion, change of our
coignes, and turning troubles into peace, if you enter into the difficulties of
effecting them, and the vertues of their effects, they will all give you pregnant
proofs of his wisdom, pollicie, and paines. The first thought almost impossible,
and unlikely to be done so quietly and quickly. That religion, for which all
the world make war, should be so soon changed, reformed and established with
peace ! that our base coins should be turned into rich monys ! and that our
troubles were now pacified, and peace perfected, which poured plenty into our
land ! and so by one man's labour, all these blessings to be brought us at once !
[that is to say] Religion the life of the soule ! rich moneys the synews of our
strength ! and peace the harvest of our labors, and fountaine of our wealth !
These three great things, to be so easily and speedily compassed, as is notably
manifest ; principally by his means and industrie ; I leave it to the world to
judge, whether, working them at the first, and contynnueing them to the last,
evene 'till his death, doe not prove the author a wise and a worthy man ? for the
like to be done, in the like manner, hath seldom berie seen."
Towards the conclusion of this first year of the Queen's reign, a proclamation
against excess of apparel appeared, upon which a certain Prelate in a discourse
from the pulpit, enumerating many of the prevailing vanities, has given us a
curious specimen of the fashions and luxuries of the day, in the following extra-
ordinary passage.
" These fine-fingered rufHers, with their sables about their necks, corked slip-
pers, trimmed buskins and warm mittens, — furred stomachers, long gowns;
these tender parnels must have one gown for the day, another for the night : one
long, another short : one for winter, another for summer : one furred through,
and another but faced : one for the work-day, another for the holy-day : one of
this colour, another of that : one of cloth, another of silk or damask. Change of
O
apparel ; one afore dinner, another at after ; one of Spanish fashion, another of
Turkey : and to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new
fashions and strange. Yea, a ruffian* will have more in his ruff and his hose,
than he should spend in a year ; he which ought to go in a russet coat, spends
as much on apparel for him and his wife, as his father would have kept a good
horse with."
We shall conclude our account of this first year of this memorable reign,
with the following passage from the history of Elizabeth, by Mademoiselle
' Wearer of ruffs.
1559.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 83
Keralio. After enumerating the important changes that took place, and by
which she says, " la face de 1' Angleterre fut changee dans quelques mois ;"
she adds, "Telles furent les operations d'une femme, de vingt-cinq ans; jusqu'
alors ou prisonniere ou ensevelie dans une profonde solitude ; qui, sans expe-
rience dans 1' art de gouverner, prenoit les renes de 1' empire, dans un temps ou
tout, au dedans et au dehors, etoit dangereux. Avant 1' annee revolue, elle
avoit afFranchi ses etats du joug Espagnol, retabli les loix promulgees par
Henri VIII. et son fils, fait la paix avec la France et 1' Ecosse, soumis
1' ambition, et fixe les opinions. Une profonde prudence avoit cree ce grand
ouvrage ; une fermete inebranlable la defendit centre 1' intrigue, et ne permit
jamais qu'on y portat la plus legere atteinte ;" without wishing to detract from
the compliment paid to Elizabeth personally, we must be allowed to claim for
Lord Burghley, his just share of credit ; particularly on the score of experience,
prudence, firmness, and resolution.
CHAP. II-
1560.
Second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign began November 17, 1559.*
Duke of Norfolk and Lord Gray sent to the North-Knot's Character-alteration in the
conduct and disposition of the Queen Regent of Scotland-Mary Queen of Scots' family,
the occasion of her troubles- Important Papers, drawn up by Cecil, on the aspect of
affairs, particularly in regard to Scotland, with the conclusions drawn from them— Peace
ofCambray, a fallacious peace— Maxims of defence— Lords of Congregation, their views
—Lethington's famous Letter— Proceedings with Scotland from Lord B.'s Notes-
Lords of Congregation's Address to the Regent, with her reply— The Conquest of Scot-
land aimed at by France— Application of Protestants to Elizabeth— Elizabeth in danger
of being beguiled— Account of Knox—Earl of Arran — Practices against England-
Address to the Queen Regent from the Camp of the Confederates— Military operations in
Scotland— Du Glasion, Spanish Minister, and Cecil's Answer to him in Latin— Duplicity
of the French— Cook's Account of the English Ministers— Account of Monluc— Elizabeth's
Proclamation against the Guises— Guises' notice of it — Spanish Interposition — Papers
by Knollys and Du G/asion— Intimation to Du Glasion of the Queens Proceedings-
Letters to Lady Cecil — Cecil sets off for Scotland — The Guises occupied with the conspiracy
of Amboise — Letters from Cecil and Wotton — Progress of the Negotiation — Treaty of
Edinburgh signed and proclaimed — Return of Cecil — Affairs of the Church — Lent season
still observed — Archbishop Parker's order for serving the Cures — Cecil's Article.
ON the very day on which the Queen entered into the second year of her reign,
we find the following entry in Lord Burghley's own notes :
" Nov. 17, anno 2d. Eliz. Consultation for order of the realm, viz. Duke of
Norfolk to be Lieutenant in the North, Lord Gray, Lord Warden in the East
* So many histories of the XVIth Century, and particularly of the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
are extant in the form of Annals, that we have judged it expedient to follow the example set us,
and to place at the head of every Chapter, or Section of the present Work, the date of the Year,
according to the Calendar ; not omitting to mark at the same time, the beginning of the Annus
Regni ; so many important events and transactions (as the meetings, sessions, and acts of Par-
liament in particular), being regulated by the latter ; at the hazard of no small confusion, unless
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 85
Marches." There was nothing certainly so much to be looked to as the northern
frontier of the realm, and the state of Scotland, where it was impossible not to
know that much was in contemplation, and much even in preparation against
England ; for the French forces, after the peace, had never been withdrawn, and
the death of Henry II. of France, had thrown so much power into the hands of
the Guises, or Princes of the house of Lorrain, brothers to the Queen Dowager of
Scotland, as very naturally to raise an apprehension that they would lose no op-
portunity of procuring the Crown of England, for their niece, by means of Scot-
land unless timely checked in their purposes and designs. Fortunately for Eli-
zabeth and for England, the Scotch were not in a state of unanimity. The
Reformation had made great progress there, in the last years of Mary of England,*
and even the Queen Dowager herself, had been driven by circumstances to unite
herself with the nobles, and others who favoured the Reformation. She had in
short been thwarted in her purposes by the Hamiltons, particularly the Arch-
bishop of St. Andrews, brother to the Regent Arran; who, foreseeing that in case
of the demise of the young Queen, his nephew might the more easily succeed,
the governor his father being already in possession, had earnestly opposed the
conferring the Crown Matrimonial^ on Francis, and got the most part of the
some care be taken to mark the difference. The Annus Regni of Queen Elizabeth's reign, may
be held constantly to begin on the 17th day of the month of November, leaving 45 days only to
the commencement of a new year, according to the historical reckoning, beginning January 1 ;
and about 128 according to the civil reckoning, beginning on the 25th of March. In both cases it
will be seen, that by much the larger portion of the Annus Regni will concur with the common
date of the year. Thus 1560 may reasonably be placed at the head of the Chapter containing
the transactions of the 2d year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, though according to one reckoning 45
days, and according to the other 128, may appear rather to belong to the year 1559. We shall
have occasion hereafter to shew, what strange mistakes have occurred from a want of attention
to this variety of dates and reckonings.
* See Vol. i. chap. Ixiv.
t The grant of the Crown Matrimonial, would have made Francis King of Scotland for life ; if
the succession of the kingdom could have been as the French intended, brought under the rule
of private inheritances in Scotland, whereby, according to what was called the Courtesy of
Scotland, whoever married an heiress was to keep possession during life, of his wife's property, if
she died without children. We may form some judgment of the overbearing influence of the
French, and bad policy of their friends in Scotland, or rather their want of patriotism, by this very
circumstance of the Crown Matrimonial ; when only three years earlier the English had been wise
enough to exclude Philip II. from all claim to the English Crown, in case Mary should die
without children, and it might be added that, by their endeavour to bring the case of the Crown
8G MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
clergy on his side. This threw the Queen Dowager, for some time, into the hands
of the Reformed party, which, by her conniving at their preaching, and favouring
them in many other ways, had greatly increased about that time in all parts.
We have seen the account which Jewel sent to his correspondents abroad,
and though things had not gone yet quite so far as he represents, yet it cannot
be doubted, but that at this time the Reformation had made considerable progress
in Scotland. Burnet acknowledges that Popery was the object of all men's
hatred: the churches were purged from idolatry and superstition; the monas-
teries were broken into ; and many acts of hot and irregular zeal were com-
plained of in all corners of the kingdom.
They had indeed at their head a reformer (Knox) as bold and dauntless as
Martin Luther; rough but sincere ; who seemed to have no object in view but
the rooting out idolatry — with that he would keep no terms. It was one of
the powers of darkness with which he was resolved to wage war wherever he
found it; crowns and sceptres could not stop his course; where he could not
convert, he seemed almost ready to destroy : but this was not so in reality. We
have indeed a remarkable testimony to a forbearance on the part of the Scottish
reformers, even in the midst of their most tumultuous movements. Bishop
Leslie has gone rather out of his way to acknowledge that the multitude was
generally under such restraint that, in the greatest heat of popular fury, there
was no blood shed ; very few of the Catholics were driven into exile, and fewer
still imprisoned ; the passage is curious : " Nobilium qui hcereseas obstringe-
bantur crimine, humanitas non est reticenda, quod eo tempore paucos catholicos
de religionis re mulctarint exilio, pauciores carcere, morte NUJLLOS."*
This testimony to the humanity of the Reformers, may serve to shew, that
had the Reformation been permitted to take its course in Scotland, as merely
a national concern, clear of foreign interference, it is possible that all the
violences committed afterwards might have been avoided. But as soon as ever
the eyes of the Reformed party came to be opened as to the true character and
aims of the Queen Regent, as the instrument of France, for so she allowed
herself to be made, it must have become extremely evident, that those who had
within the rules of private inheritance, they were virtually oversetting the claims of their niece
upon England ; the laws of private inheritance being there entirely against her claims, as not born
in England, nor of parents in obedience to the English Crown, as has before been shewn.
* In the tumults at Perth in 1559, the people appear to have been in like manner restrained from
plunder. See upon this Cook, vol. ii. 81, who properly corrects Collier.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 87
espoused the cause of the Reformation, would have to contend, not merely for
liberty of conscience, but for the ancient rights and liberties of their native
country, likely to be surrendered to the wiles and machinations of a foreign
usurper. The Queen Dowager had no sooner found means to get the Regency
out of the hands of Arran,* than she threw aside the mask, and became an
immediate instrument in the hands of her brothers of Lorrain, to root out
heresy, and in virtue of her daughter's sovereignty, to deliver over the kingdom of
Scotland, as it would seem, to the dominion of France. It is scarcely possible to
put any other construction on the measures she is known to have taken. But with
regard to the time of which we are writing, it is confidently asserted that imme-
diately after the conclusion of the peace of Cambray, she received intelligence
from the Cardinal of Lorrain, by the hands of M. Bettancourt, master of his
household, that, by a secret convention, the Pope, the Emperor, and the Kings
of Spain and France, had agreed to unite their forces, and to exert the utmost of
their power, to reduce all Europe again under the authority of the Roman see,
and to pursue and punish with fire and sword, all heretics who would not
submit to the same. It deserves to be considered also, that at this very period,
the French had, according to very credible accounts, taken such advantage of
the tender years of the young Queen of Scotland, as to induce her privately to
execute three deeds, whereby, in default of issue, she absolutely conferred on the
Crown of France the whole kingdom of Scotland, with whatever inheritance or
succession might accrue to it.-\ Robertson justly and properly acquits the young
* The Regent Arran was entirely under the control of his more subtle brother, the Archbishop
of St. Andrews, who, as it has been shewn, wished to keep the Crown Matrimonial from
Francis, and the Regency in his own hands, that in case any thing should happen to Mary, the
Crown might devolve at once to his brother or nephew, but the Archbishop happening to be
seized with a severe illness, so severe, that, as it has been said, he would have died but for the
assistance of the celebrated Cardan, the Queen Dowager seized the opportunity, in conjunction
with the French Court, to 'procure the resignation of the Regency into her own hands. The
Archbishop's recovery gave some check to these proceedings, which induced the Queen a second
time to court and humour the Protestants, but as the latter disliked Arran, they supported her
in her designs, and even assisted her in procuring at last such a resignation of the trust, as led
to a parliamentary settlement of the Regency in her hands, April, 1554.
t Dr. Cook, in his history of the Scottish Reformation, gives the following account of this dark
transaction— " Under this apparent candour of the French Court, there was concealed the most
artful and detestable dissimulation ; at the very time in which the liberties of Scotland, and the
eventual succession of the family of Hamilton to the Crown, were, as the Scottish Commissioners
88 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
Queen of being a party in this dark transaction ; since, from the names and exalted
stations of those more deeply concerned in it, it is evident that they were only
practising upon her inexperience, and natural deference for her foreign relatives.
The King of France himself, the Keeper of the Great Seal, the Duke of
Guise, and the Cardinal of Lorrain, were the principal and immediate agents in
this scene of iniquity; for it was to be kept concealed from Mary's own subjects
in every way possible. Surely, the worst enemies that Mary ever had, were
those who thus exposed her in her earliest years, to the just suspicions and
political jealousies, not only of a powerful neighbour, but of the most patriotic
of her own people.f Their mode of proceeding was injurious in every way
possible to her future happiness; that she and her family had been passed over
by Henry VIII. in his strange settlement of the succession, was, we must allow,
sufficient to irritate her feelings when old enough to reflect on such things; but
let her claims by blood have been what they might, Elizabeth came before her, on
the ground of a Parliamentary conveyance of the Crown, the cordial reception
and acknowledgment of her subjects, and a fair claim to be regarded as a
legitimate daughter of Henry, by all who considered his espousal of Queen
Katherine to have been contrary to the law of God, and therefore not to be dis-
pensed with by any power upon earth. But in the way the French Court asserted
Mary's claim, as it evidently proceeded upon two grounds, disallowed in Eng-
land; first, the insufficiency of Henry's settlement, and secondly, the validity of
his marriage in virtue of a Popish dispensation, — they must have appeared to be
defying and insulting both Elizabeth and England, plainly bastardising the
former, after having left Mary unmolested; disputing Henry's will, though
sanctioned by Parliament; and probably through a knowledge of England's
crippled state, too clearly discovering their design of immediately taking into
believed, sincerely confirmed, Mary was induced to subscribe deeds totally inconsistent with both,
by which she conveyed her kingdom in free gift to the King of France, if she should leave no
children; and declared, that whatever confirmation she might, in compliance with the wishes of
Parliament, give to the lineal succession, the deeds which she had executed expressed her real
sentiments and intentions." Copies of these treacherous deeds are stated to be in the Advocate's
library, we have ourselves seen such in the British Museum, tending so strongly to confirm the
fact, as to leave no doubt in our minds of the truth of the alleged contract.
" Les Guises," says Mademoiselle Keralio, " enivroient cette Princesse [Marie Stuart] du
poison de la flatterie, et environnoient sa jeunesse des songes d' ambition, tandis que, par les
mains de sa mere, ils lui preparoient une vie affreuse, et une mort plus cruelle encore."— Histoire
d? Elisabeth. 1560.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 89
their hands the entire government of Scotland, to resist the Reformation there,
and place its young Sovereign in a state of positive hostility to all the Pro-
testants on both sides of the Tweed as well as to Elizabeth, as an usurper of a
Crown which more justly belonged to herself.
We may now therefore turn to the proceedings of the English Government,
thus early called into action, to keep the Crown on the head of Elizabeth, and
her kingdom from invasion, by a foe, who had a design on the whole island ;
for England was certainly regarded by the French Court at this time, as no
other than an inheritance and succession accruing to Scotland, if it could but once
obtain entire dominion over the latter country.
It may be considered indeed extremely fortunate for England, that the French
intrigues, the duplicity of the Queen Dowager, the presence of a foreign army,
and the dangers to which Protestantism was thereby exposed, should have
brought things to a sort of crisis, exactly at the period of Elizabeth's accession to
the Crown of England. It is seldom that the commencement of a reign requires
such an immediate exertion of political talents as was the case in this instance.
Every thing was found to depend, not on the military strength of the kingdom
(that was shaken and enfeebled); not on any immediate command of money,
for the Treasury was miserably low; but on a promptness to remedy and repair,
what would in all likelihood be so soon wanted, and in the meantime a sagacity
to foresee and take account of all the dangers that threatened ; to ward off, as
discreetly as possible, such as were most apparent, and to penetrate and counter-
act such as were preparing in secret.*
The Queen Regent, and the Reformed party, had now for some time been at
variance. They had even had recourse to arms ; not however without many at-
tempts, by treaties, conventions, and truces, to bring things to a more amicable
arrangement, but in vain. On the Regent's side, the truces were broken, the
treaties violated, and as she became more deceitful, she became more proud. She
was not destitute of talents, nor yet of virtues, but she was a mere tool in the
hands of her brothers, who sent French soldiers to support her, French counsel-
lors to advise her, and French ministers to encourage her, in all she did ; even
French ecclesiastics to dispute with the Protestants. The true interests of Scot-
land appeared to be forgotten ; all who were on her side were regarded Ly their
* See Throckmorton's Letters from France to the Queen, Sir William Cecil, Leicester, &c,.
passim; and Millot's Histoire Moderne, torn. ii. epoque xi. ch. iii.
VOL. II. N
90 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
Protestant countrymen as in the interests of France; all who were opposed to
her were regarded by the French and their Catholic adherents as heretics.*
In this posture of affairs, whither could any true patriots look for help, if their
own strength should appear to fail? they were in danger of being hunted down
as heretics, and as for any communication with their own Queen, it was utterly
impossible, but through the medium of such, as they had but too much reason
given them to regard as no better than foreign foes. Having helped the Queen
to the Regency, they seemed to think they had a right to depose her, when her ac-
tions seemed to take a turn entirely adverse to the liberties of their native country.
They took this step, therefore, and by that means placed themselves evidently in
hostile association, as far as regarded the Regency and the interference of the
French ; though certainly not necessarily so, as far as respected their proper
Sovereign, had she been more independent, or in better hands.-\ They may have
* Nothing could well be more irritating than Mary's conduct towards the Protestants. Twice
had she turned to them for support against the Harailtons, who kept the clergy from siding with
the French, but when she had attained her end, of attaching the Popish clergy to her cause, worked
upon by their fears of the spreading of the Reformation., she treated those Protestants with the
most unbecoming pride; resented their interference; made a mockery of her own engagements
to them ; and almost necessarily compelled them to renounce entirely, if not their allegiance to
Mary, their obedience to such a tyrannous power as she* evidently assumed, as the Regent of their
own making. That she was goaded on to do this there can be no doubt, but she did it more un-
graciously than might have been expected, from the preceding traits of her character, though dis-
simulation seems constantly to have been one of her greatest foibles, as we have before had occasion
to remark ; and indeed we are much disposed to agree entirely with Dr. McCrie, in what he has ad-
vanced upon the subject, in his Life of Knox, Period VI. and in the valuable note F. F. vol. i. p. 431.
t It is well known that Willock and Knox were consulted upon this point, as ministers of the
Gospel ; and as the Calvinistic school, at Geneva, is pretty generally held to have inculcated prin-
ciples of government, if not entirely republican, very adverse to the indefeasible rights of hereditary
monarchs, we ought, perhaps, in justice to Knox, to mention the three conditions upon which he
held that the Regent, in this case, might be suspended. First, that they did not suffer the mis-
conduct of the Queen Regent to alienate their affections from due allegiance to their Sovereigns,
Francis and Mary ; secondly, that they were not actuated in the measure by private hatred or envy
of the Queen Dowager, but by regard for the safety of the commonwealth ; and thirdly, that any
sentence they should pronounce, at this time, should not preclude her re-admission to the office,
if she afterwards discovered sorrow for her conduct, and a disposition to submit to the advice of
the counsellors of the kingdom.— See Me Crie's Life of Knox, i. 299, (with note K. K. on the loyalty
of the Scottish Protestants) and the remarks following, p. 301 , on the general question of the beha-
viour of subjects towards rulers abusing their power. We must remember that the securities
enjoyed in this country, against the abuses of power in the Crown, were not then known or
.1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 91
felt, -as Rapin seems to hint, that in the eyes of the French Court, they could not
but appear, not merely as unfit tools, to be drawn into the project of dethroning
a Protestant Queen, who was establishing their religion in England, but even as
the greatest possible obstacles to such a project.* They may have felt averse
even from assisting so to extend the dominions of Mary, if she were to continue
Catholic, and in the hands of so notoriously bigoted a family, as her maternal
relations of the house of Lorrain ; in short, it would be difficult to say what other
expedient could have suggested itself to their minds, but that of applying to Eliza-
beth for English succour and support.
An application of this nature seems to have been one of the first questions
submitted to the judgment of Sir William Cecil ;f and which led to the very
understood. See Blackstone, b. i. c. 7. upon the subject of the above note ; however, the reader
would do well to consult Collier, ii. 459. Bayle, Art. Knox, notes D. and E. and Kenney's
Principles of the Reformers.
* Robertson concludes this to have been so obvious to the French, as to be the motive of the
most cruel persecutions, could they but have taken effect. " It was vain," says he, " to expect
the assistance of the Scottish Protestants to dethrone a Queen, whom all Europe esteemed the
guardian and defender of the Reformed faith. To break the power and reputation of that party in
Scotland, became for this reason a necessary step towards the invasion of England, with this the
Princes of Lorrain resolved to open their schemes, and as persecution was the only method for sup-
pressing religions known in that age, or dictated by the despotic and sanguinary spirit of the
Romish superstition ; this, in its utmost violence, they determined to employ. The Earl of Argyle,
the Prior of St. Andrew's, and other leaders of the party, were marked out by them for immediate
destruction ; and they hoped, by punishing them, to intimidate their followers." That these mea-
sures were, in some degree checked, he attributes to the remonstrances of that humane and sagacious
princess, the Regent. We would withhold from this lady no just commendation ; we are willing
to admit that she possessed both humanity and sagacity, but her deference to her brothers led her
to submit her own judgment too far in this arduous business, to their impetuous zeal ; it even
appeared to have totally altered her character, from affable she became morose ; from conde-
scending, proud ; instead of seeking to reconcile parties, she began to set the Protestants wholly at
defiance ; to keep no faith with them ; to threaten them as heretics ; and upon the rashly avowed
principle, that Princes' promises were not always to be holden.
t Knox, on his return to Scotland, in May 1559, soon saw the necessity of uniting Elizabeth
and the Congregation in one confederacy to oppose the French ; he plainly saw that France had
resolved on the conquest of England as well as Scotland, and that England ought to see this;
and he mentioned it to Kirkaldy of Grange, who wrote to Sir Harry Percy, afterwards Earl of
Northumberland, and in a subsequent interview, pressed it so forcibly upon him, that the latter
conceived it to be his duty at once to submit the proposals of the Congregation to Cecil, " the
enlightened and able secretary of Elizabeth. This profound statesman," Dr. Cook goes on to say,
92 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
curious and important memorials which we have now to copy, in which attention
must still be paid to the injurious designs of the French, against the liberties,
the laws, and ancient rights of both countries. The two papers seem to have
been drawn up in the month of August, of the first year of the Queen's reign,
though not acted upon till the commencement of the second year.
The first is entitled a Memorial of certain points meet for restoring the
realm of Scotland to the ancient weale. The date is August 5, 1559, and
is taken from a copy in Secretary Cecil's hand-writing, Cotton Library, Cal.
B.x. fol. 17.
" Imprimis,* it is to be noted, that the best worldly felicity that Scotland can
have, is either to continue in a perpetual peace with the kingdom of England,
or to be made one monarchy with England, as they both make but one island,
divided from the rest of the world.
" If the first is sought, that is, to be in perpetual peace with England, then
must it necessarily be provided, that Scotland be not so subject to the appoint-
ments of France, as is presently, which being an ancient enemy to England,
seeketh always to make Scotland an instrument to exercise thereby their malice
upon England, and to make a footstool thereof to look over England as they
may. Therefore, when Scotland shall come into the hands of a mere Scottish
man in blood, then may there be hope of such accord ; but as long as it is at
the commandment of the French there is no hope to have accord long betwixt
these two realms.
" Therefore seeing it is at the French King's commandment by reason of his
" aware of what might be the result of the application which had been made by Percy, laid his
communication before the Council." This appears to have occurred in July, and the papers were
prepared in August.
* " This memorial," says Dr. Cook, " is written with great ability, displays profound political
knowledge, and is full of the justest sentiments respecting the real interests of Scotland." — Vol. ii.
214. Had the political life of Lord Burghley began with the reign of Elizabeth, as some pretend, it
might reasonably be asked, how came he to be so well acquainted with the real interests of both
kingdoms, and to be able to display such profound knowledge in only the very first year of her reign.
This very paper may be said to embrace all the politics of England with regard to Scotland, from
the days of Henry VIII. when he was scandalously cheated, as we shall always think, out of his
projected matrimonial union of the two kingdoms, which the Scotch are too prone to regard, as a
profligate design to bring Scotland into subjection, not considering that the marrying Mary to the
Dauphin of France, instead of Edward, threatened the subjection of the whole island to a foreign
power.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 93
wife, it is to be considered, for the weal of Scotland, that until she have
children, and during her absence out of the realm, the next heirs to the Crown,
being the House of the Hamiltons, should have regard hereto, and to see that
neither the Crown be imposed nor wasted ; and on the other side, the nobility
and commonalty ought to foresee that the laws and the old customs of the realm
be not altered, neither that the country be not impoverished by taxes imprest, or
new imposts, after the manner of France ; for provision wherein, both by the
law of God and man, the French King and his wife may be moved to reform
their misgovernance of the land.
"And for this purpose, it were good that the Nobility and Commons joined
with the next heir to the Crown, to seek due reformation of such great abuses, as
tend to the ruin of their country, which must be done before the French grow
too strong and insolent.
" First, That it may be provided by consent of the three estates of the land,
that the land may be free from all idolatry, like as England is, for justification
whereof, if any free general council may be had where the Pope of Rome have
not the seat of judgment, they may offer to shew their cause to be most agreeable
to Christ's religion.
" Next, To provide that Scotland might be governed in all rules and offices, by
the ancient blood of the realm, without either captains, lieutenants, or soldiers,
as all other Princes govern their countries, and especially that the forts might be
in the hands of mere Scottish men.
" Thirdly, That they might never be occasioned to enter into wars against
England, except England should give the first cause to Scotland.
" Fourthly, That no nobleman of Scotland should receive pension of France,
except it were whilst he did serve in France ; for otherwise thereby the French
would shortly corrupt many, and betray their own country.
" Fifthly, That no office, abbey, living, or commodity, be given to any but
mere Scottish men, by the assent of the three estates of the realm.
" Sixth, That there be a council in Scotland appointed in the Queen's absence,
to govern the whole realm, and in those cases not to be directed by the French.
" Seventhly, That it be by the said three estates appointed, how the Queen's
revenue of the realm shall be expended, how much the Queen shall have for
her portion and estate during her absence, how much shall be limited to the
governance and defence of the realm, how much yearly appointed to be kept in
treasure.
94 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
" In tkese and such like points,* if the French King and the Queen be found
unwilling, and will withstand these provisions for the weale of the land, then
hath the three estates of the realm authority, forthwith, to intimate to the King
and Queen their humble requests ; and if the same be not effectually granted,
then humbly they may commit the governance thereof to the next heir of the
Crown, binding the same also to observe the laws and ancient rights of the realm.
" Finally, If the Queen shall be unwilling to this, as it is likely she will, in
" " The conclusion of the paper," says Dr. Cook, of Laurencekirk, " is very remarkable ;
proceeding upon doctrines which evince the enlargement of Cecil's mind, and the just sentiments
of liberty which he entertained," — and he copies the three last paragraphs. But we must continue
our extracts from this learned writer, as bearing so particularly on Lord Burghley's immediate
counsel and advice: " However much the opinion thus delivered by Cecil corresponds with sound
reason, and with the nature and design of all good government, it could not have been expected
to be so forcibly urged, and so unambiguously applied, by a courtier of the age in which he
lived, and by the confidential Minister of a Sovereign, who, although she exalted the glory of
her kingdom, and has upon that account been long contemplated with enthusiastic admiration,
was certainly in a high degree jealous of her prerogative, and most careful to prevent the repre-
sentatives of her subjects from using any language, or indulging in any political speculations,
which tended in the slightest manner to reduce to practice within her own dominions, what her
Secretary so earnestly enforced in the case of Scotland. The Lords of the Congregation, and the
preachers who supported their cause, have often been branded as seditious demagogues, merely
for inculcating the political tenets which Cecil has interwoven in his memorial. The circumstance
of these tenets being espoused by one of the ablest public characters who distinguished the reign
of Elizabeth, may perhaps remove the prejudices, with which, when considered as the doctrines
of Knox and his adherents, they have often been regarded : and a dispassionate examination of
them can hardly fail to shew, that by maintaining them, the Scottish Reformers promoted the
advancement of liberty, and laid or strengthened the foundation of our admirable constitution;
a constitution not free indeed from defects, which every good patriot wishes to have removed,--
but even with these, the wonder, the envy, and the glory of the civilized world." — Book ii. 216,
217. We must not conceal that the same author is very severe upon the Secretary for his disre-
gard of treaties, and for an early disposition manifested, to foment dissension among the subjects
of the Scottish Queen ; but there are some contradictions in his statement, such particularly, as
its being the object of the English government, p. 221, to find sufficient occupation for the
French troops iu Scotland, to turn their attention aside from England : but Cecil's plan was to
procure the French troops to be withdrawn, and then to trust matters to the Scots, in full
confidence that, the French once withdrawn, the two nations might be on a footing of amity.
The systematic opposition to Mary of which he complains, was a systematic opposition only to
those, who, through Mary, would have made havoc of England if they could, and transferred
Elizabeth's crown to the head of Mary, for the purposes of their own ambition and tyrannny.
Compare what he himself says, p. 240.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 9">
respect of the greedy and tyrannous affection of France, then it is apparent that
Almighty God is pleased to transfer from her the rule of the kingdom for the
weale of it, and this time must be used with great circumspection, to avoid the
deceipts and tromperies of the French.*
" And then may the realm of Scotland consider, being once made free, what
means may be devised, by God's goodness, to accord the two realms, to endure
for time to come at the pleasure of Almighty God, in whose hands the hearts of
all Princes be."
The next paper, also preserved in Sir William's hand-writing, in the Cottonian
Library, is, a short discussion of the weighty matters of Scotland, August, 1559.
" Question, Whether it be mete that England should help the Nobilitie and
Protestants of Scotland, to expell the French : or No ?
" That No.
" I. It is against God's law to ayd any subjects against their naturall prince,
or their Ministers.
"II, It is dangerouse to doo it ; for if the ayd shall be no other than maye be
* The doctrine here inculcated, touches upon all the points connected with a regular, though
not voluntary, abdication of J,he throne. If it should seem to some to be partially and directly
levelled against Mary, it deserves consideration, how consistent it is with the principles of our
own revolution. The question did not regard Mary so much as " the weale" of her kingdom,
and the probability there was of the ancient realm of Scotland, becoming no better than a
transmarine colony of France ; in which case, as an hereditary monarchy, the next heir was to
be looked to, for the preservation of her rights and liberties, by consent and appointment of the
three estates of the realm, for even the next heir might be unqualified, as was the case at the
revolution; then tint family to be considered, as was done with regard to Mary Princess of
Orange, for James II. had a son — both father and son were set aside ; but though our ancestors
are judged to have done right, and their policy stands approved, such disturbances in an
hereditary monarchy, require, as Cecil states, great circumspection. See a curious discussion of
a case something similar in regard to Portugal, in the John Bull newspaper, October 12th, 1828,
and compare Chalmers' Life of Mary, vol. ii. 410, &c. The last author appears to glory in any
foreign interference with Scotland, rather than that of England ; he speaks of Scotland and
France being, by the marriage of Francis and Mary, " identified, for the benefit of both," and
of " the liberties of the people of both being enlarged, by the effects of that union ;" — about as much,
we are tempted to observe, as the liberties of the people of England were enlarged by the union
of our own Mary with Philip of Spain; with this difference, however, in favour of England, that
Mary of England was not taken to Spain, and that Philip had no real authority over England.
It might, Mr. C. admits, be an inconvenience to England, but no injury. We can only say, that in
our estimation, it was only prevented becoming an injury, and that of the deepest stamp, by
Cecil's care and foresight.
g6 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
kept in secretie, it cannot be great ; and so consequently it shall not suffice. If
it shall be open, it will procure warres, and the end thereof is uncertain.
" III. It maye be dowted, that when money spent is, and aids shall be given,
the French maye compound with the Scottes, and pardon that error, to joyne
both in force ageynst England, which is more easy to be beleved, because they
had rather make a shamefull composition with Scotland, than suffer it to be
rejoyned and united to the Crown of England.
" IV. It may be dowted, that to stay the progress of religion, agaynst the See
of Rome, the Emperor, the King Catholicke, the Pope, and the Potentates in
Italy, the Duke of Savoye, will rather conspyre with the French King, than to
suffer theis two monarchies to be joyned in one manner of religion. And in this
part may be dowted that many, as well Scottes as English, that can lyke very
well to have these two kingdomes perfectly knitte in amytye, will not allowe
them to be knitt in a lyke religion.
"That Yea.
" I. First, It is agreeable, both in the law of God and nature, that every
prynce, and publyck state, shuld defend it self; not only from perrills presently
sene, but from dangers that be probably sene to come shortly after.
" II. Secondly, nature and reason teacheth every person, politick or other, to
use the same manner of defence, that the adversary useth in offence.
" Uppon theis two prynciples agreed will evidently follow, that England both
maye, and ought to ayde Scotland to kepe owt the Frenche.
" 1 . First, The Crowne of England hath a good title to the superiority of Scot-
land, and ought to defend the libertyes thereof, asThemperor is bound to defend
the State of Millane, or of Boheme, being held of the Empyre. And to prove
this superiority, remayne undowted prooffes under seal of sondry homagees
done to this Crowne by the Kings of Scotland successy vely. Of their accesses
to the Parlements of England, of the episcopall jurisdiction of the see of York
over Scotland : in consideration whereof, if it may be, it may appere that the
French meane to subdue Scotland, and so to exempt that Realme from the
amytie of England, it seemeth that England is of duety and in honour bound
to preserve the Realme of Scotland from such an absolute dominion of the French.
" 2. Item, Besides this interest that England hath in the Crowne of Scotland,
for the quiet possession, whereas France hathe onely by their warres kept
the Realme of England ;* It is most manifest that France cannot in
* A word seems wanting; probably in danger.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 97
any wise so redely, so puissantly, so easily, offend, yea, invade, and put the
Crowne of England in daunger, as if they may recover an absolute authoritie
over Scotland : and before that be proved, it seemeth not out of order,
though not very needful], to make manifest that the French ar to be taken
as enemyes in will, though not in manifest words.
" How long time they have been enemyes to England, how brickie, \iovr false,
how double, their pacts of Peace have bene, the stories be witnesses, theis
seven hondred yeres. Was there ever a King of England, with whom they
have not made warres ? And now of late, uppon what occasion they made
peace with England, is too manifest.
" It was by reason of weariness and povertye, which was such, as the last
French King forbore not to expresse in his letters to the Queen of England,
mentioning the invasions made in Bryttaine by sea. And indeed this is to
be received as a principle, that France cannot be poor above one or two yeres,
nether can be so long out of wars. The revenues of the French Crown are
thyngs unknown : the insolency of the French nation, being in hope of victory,
is not unknown. The long old hatred of the House of Guise, which now occu-
pieth the King's Authoritie, agaynst England, hath been often well understood.
" And to come nerer to the Matter ; it is manifest many wayes what manner
a Platt that House hath made, to bereave the Queen's Majesty of Mr crown.
In Queen Marys time, the French did not let to divulge ther opinions agaynst
this Lawful Title of the Queen's Majesty ; and as it was well knowen, had not
Almighty God favored the Queen's Majesty to come to the Crowne with such
universal joy of her people, the French had proclaimed ther Title both in
France and Scotland.
"And likewise in the treaty of the peace at Chasteau in Cambresis, it
appeared what they would have compassed, when they pressed the Burgun-
dians to conclude with them, and overpass the Treaty with England; alledging
that they could not tell how to treat with England, but to the Prejudice
of ther right ; the Dauphiness, his Daughter, then having a right to the
Crowne of England. How bold they would have been, if at that tyme she
had been Queen of France, and her Husband King, as he now is ? For then
the Wisdom of the Constable governed the Rashness of the Guisians.
"Sehce the Peace concluded, whilest the French King lived, what means
they made at Rome to have made the Queen Majesty to be declared
Illegitimate, is manifest ; and so it is known that the same Sentence is brought
VOL. II. O
t)Q MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
into France, under the Pope's Bulls. Likewise, at the confirmation of the
Peace between Spain and France, at the Solemnities even where the French
King was slaine, it appereth, what manifest injuriee and dishonour they did
to the Queen's Majesty, to assign the arms of England and Ireland to the
French Queen, and that in all their Pageants : and being admonished thereof
by the Ambassador, wold nether make collorable excuse, nor leave it ; but
both continued therein, and also to despise the Queen's Majesty's Ambas-
sador, and ratification of the Peace with the Stile. M. Meulas serv'd them
with Silver vessell stamped with the usurped arms. How lightly they have
esteemed the Queen's Majesty, in all this tyme appereth : For here they be
bound by Treaty to deliver 4 hostages, notwithstanding that they have been
pressed thereto, they have sent but three ; whereof one or two be such, as
if they had not been here ; but whether the Queen's Majesty had not suffered
the Dishonour, to have one of her subjects Murdered, and no redress thereof,
but as it appered when they had committed the Murder, they disdained, and
quarrelled against such as did but seke to understand the Offenders.
" Now the very cause why they stay the prosecution hereof is this, their Inter-
ruption and Parboylls unlocked for in Scotland, which doth so occupy them, as
they nether can ne dare to utter ther former Maliciose purpose untill that be ended.
"But surely beside there old Cankered Malyce to this Realme, this Matter so
inflameththe House of Guise, that they will not forbear one day longer than of
mere necessity, they shall be constrained, to bord this Realm with the fayned
Tytle, and to avance the same. It is knowen that they have sent a great scale
into Scotland with the Armes, and very Stile and Title of England and Ireland.
And what more menifest Arguments can be to shew what they mean and intend
then these. In Princes Practices it is mere childishness to tarry until the
Trumpet sounds War. All things have there causes preceding before, but
nothing hath his causes preceding more secretly than the Practices of Princes;
and of all other none is so conning as the French.
"It followeth to be considered, that now the French have no convenient way to
invade England, but by Scotland; by Carlisle they were accustomed, by sea is
not so convenient for them, the same being too chargeable for them to assayle.
Wherefore if it be sene that they will pursue their purpose, and that by Scot-
land, then Reason must force England to confess, that to avoyde this Danger so
apparent, can no way be devised, but to help that the French have not such
JRw/eand Overhand in Scotland as that they may by that Realme, invade England.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 99
" Lastly, It is to be considered how dangerouse it is for England to be invaded
by the way of Scotland.
" First. If the French shall present to England a Battle, either they will do
it with Strangers, or French and Strangers ; if they win, which God forbid, they
put in hazard this Crowne. And though they Lese, yet do they not put their
own Kingdom of France in Danger. And therefore it is double the danger for
England, to venter Battle upon the Frontiers of England, to a Battle upon the
Marches of Calais, or Bulloyness.
"A Conclusion.
"It seemeth the weightiest Matter to be considered, that either hath or can
chance to England, what is presently to be done for the aid of Scotland : For
if it shuld be needfull the Delay will adventure the whole : and if Loss come,
it is unrecoverable.
" Wherefore it were good that the cause were well and secretly weighed :
First, by discreet and wise Men, that have Experience, affected to the English
nation, special love to the Queen's Majesties person; and that done, to send by
some colours for the Nobilitie, and to consult with them, or els to send some
trusty persons with credit to understand their Minds."
We have judged it right to exhibit these papers at length, though they have
often been printed before, by Burnet, Strype, Robertson, &c., because they
plainly shew what was the Secretary's view of the case in all its bearings, at the
very commencement of Elizabeth's reign ; and may therefore be of use to us, in
judging of the policy of the measures that were afterwards adopted ; we dis-
cover from the very mode in which they are drawn up, that the line of policy
England had to pursue from the first moment of the Queen's accession, was, as
it were, but a choice between many difficulties,* a tendency towards extremities
one way or the other, England and her Sovereign being no otherwise to be
defended, than by a positive resistance of the French influence in Scotland, acting
upon a double motive, first, the establishment of an absolute power over Scot-
land, in virtue of Mary's sovereignty, and thereby paving the way for an invasion
* " So that this quarrel now begun is likely to be a perpetual incumbrance to this kingdom."
— Cecil. This soon afterwards became so apparent to the whole Council, that they readily joined
in an address to the Queen, in which all the designs and deceitful practices of the French are so
circumstantially set forth, that a more curious historical record scarcely perhaps exists. It
may be seen in Forbes, vol. i. p. 390. It seems lo have been drawn up by the Secretary
himself.
100 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
of England, and the removal of Elizabeth; and secondly, a determination, in
resentment of what was doing in England to revive the Reformation, to succour
and assist the Catholics, extirpate the Protestants, and finally reduce the whole
island to an acknowledgment of the Papal authority.
Nor would it be easy to shew that these two designs were ever abandoned,
during the disturbances and distractions of the northern kingdom ; though often
pretended to be so, where advantages could be taken, of a hollow peace, or any
temporary reconciliation ; advantages against which England constantly had to
guard, by a foresight of remote events, and a jealousy and distrust of present
transactions, the grounds of which could not be clearly discerned, or could not
indeed be expected to be so, but by those who like the Secretary himself, had
opportunities of receiving such intelligence as might be a guide to the Queen's
Council and Government.
It is well to consider this, since Elizabeth and her great minister, Cecil, stand
charged in many books, with great dissimulation as to the peace of Cambray ;
even Sir Robert Cotton, the great collector, to whom all historians owe so much,
took upon him to make a remark in his own hand on Sir William Cecil's MS.
discussion to the following effect. "Notwithstanding that this month of
August. 1559, the treaty of Upsetlington, between the Queen of England, and
Mary and Francis of Scotland, was made and confirmed; yet did she, as
appears by this consultation in the hand of Sir William Cecil her secretary,
continue her purpose of aid and support to the faction in Scotland of Murray."
—See Sadler's State Papers, by Clifford, i. 383. But Sir Robert must have
overlooked two circumstances in the discussion; first, that the peace had been
made in the month of May, and only confirmed in August, and that in the
mean while the French had given two proofs of their own insincerity; first, by
not sending the stipulated number of hostages, and secondly, by keeping up and
even augmenting their armies in Scotland. " The French," says Lord Burghley
in the discussion as printed in Sadler, " have a great advantage at present, for
they pretend outwardly to keep peace with us, and yet they, under the pretence
of this matter in Scotland, do daily levy, prest, and send soldiers into Scotland :
and England, upon colour of peace, doth not so much as talk how to be defended,
and if it forbear until the French be in the field, then it is easily perceived how
late it will be to send for succours to Almain." — " These things being but words
of peace, of war, of levying of men, of arming, of victualling, of money, of
munition, and such like, move but as words may, but when time shall come,
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. J01
(which Almighty God prolong), then will it move and stir all good English
bloods, some to fear, some to anger, some to be at their wits end."
Sir Robert Cotton made his remark no doubt in the sincerity of an honest
heart, and the editor of Sadler's papers, most likely copied it under a similar
impression, but Lord Burghley himself, has given us perhaps the best clue to
all that was passing.* The peace of Cambray, upon which -the Scotch treaty
depended, was concluded April 2d, that with Francis and Mary, May 30, the
discussion was written in August.
Cecil seems to have well known that the French treaties were in general
but words; " parchment and wax;"t and that if Elizabeth could not be protected
on the side of Scotland her doom was sealed. In a letter to Sir R. Sadler and
Sir James Croft, on the 3d of November, 1559, Sir William writes, " Upon the
consideration of your neighbours causes there (i. e. of the Congregation in
Scotland), it is here seen by such to whom it hath bene secretly committed, that
the end of this their matter, is certainly the begynnyng of ours, be it weal or
woo ; and therefore I see it will follow necessarily, that we must have good
regard that they fail not." It is certainly to the necessity of the case we must
look, and the degree of probability there was, that the failure of the Congre-
gation would inevitably let the French into England. The French had it in
their power to act more openly than the English, the revolt of the Congregation
* The following communication made to the Queen by Throckmorton, on the 27th of July, is
some proof of the insincerity of the French. On the letting of the lands about Calais, it was
found difficult to get any to accept the leases, as in eight years it was to be restored to England.
On reference to the Cardinal of Lorrain, he made a mockery of their apprehensions ; wondered
how they could be " so mad," as to think any restitution was really meant. That that article of
the treaty " was only inserted to make Englishmen believe so." — Forbes, i. 175.
f We must not certainly pretend to defend a breach of treaty, but that Cecil should be indif-
ferent about the treaty of Cambray cannot be wondered. He must have known that the French, if
they could have done it, would have made no peace with the English, but, had it been in their
power, would have made a separate peace with Philip, to be the more at liberty to attack Eliza-
beth. Fortunately Philip did not want to make them too powerful, and, as it turned out, saw their
designs upon Scotland and England, almost as plainly as Cecil ; and was as much bent upon their
not succeeding. " The insincere and profligate uncles of Mary," says Dr. Cook, " amidst all their
negotiations at Cambray, never lost sight of the opportunities they might have of attacking
Elizabeth, by sending fresh troops to Scotland to oppose the Protestants." The validity of treaties
generally depend on circumstances ; Charles V. and Francis I. concluded a treaty at Noyon in
1516, in which they swore to observe a perpetual peace, and it scarcely lasted two days. — Diet.
•Hist. Francois I.
102 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
affording them a plea for augmenting their forces in Scotland, which was all
they wanted. That accomplished, to the defeat and subjection of the Protes-
tants, no treaty probably would have had force to keep them out of England.
To ward off this great danger, required certainly the utmost attention of the
English Court, and must have excited a strong interest there in favour of a
party, which, upon very plausible grounds, had placed itself as a sort of barrier
between the French and English. — See the Queen's letter to Sir R. Sadler and
Sir James Croft. State Papers, i. 566. It is certainly a most curious document,
and supposed to proceed entirely from the pen of Cecil. It is impossible to
suppose that such a paper will not make a different impression on different
minds. Those who look for a plot on the part of England, will find it there ; a
deep laid plot, to enable the Reformed party in Scotland the better to obtain the
aid of Elizabeth, they being at that time in a state of armed opposition to the
governing powers, and a treaty in subsistence of peace and amity ; still we find
in this document such actual and undeniable truths, as ought to procure it
sufficient attention and regard, as a measure of defence to England. The Scots
had been generally insulted by the French armies ; the Nobility, including the
next heirs to the Crown in default of issue from Mary, had been set at defiance
by a foreign Regent, the known instrument of a most powerful and bigoted
French family ; a claim to the Crown of England on the part of the Scottish
Queen was known to have been avowed, and kept up by that family, and that
nothing could so directly and immediately enable such claimants to seize upon
the English Crown, as the establishment of an absolute control over Scotland,
by the defeat and subjection of the Protestants. Instead of being kept in
suspense and in hazard, by being obliged to continue a course of secret and
clandestine communications, nothing could be fairer and better, than to have
Elizabeth herself made a party, upon an appeal which might bring all these
grievances and dangers together, " using therein suche order oftyme and suche
trewthe, as the same weare don and committed." P. 569. If there were danger
to England to the extent this letter expresses, Elizabeth was fortunate to have
such servants, as Cecil, Sadler, Croft, and Randolph to defend and protect her ;
though while acting upon foresight * and suspicion only, they were obliged to
* See No. cxxix. p. 576. To ward off foreseen danger is always an arduous task ; for if the
attempt succeed and no danger occur, it necessarily becomes a matter of doubt whether it would
have occurred, and therefore whether the means used to avert it were not superfluous or unwise, or
even worse. It is impossible to proceed far in the history of this reign, particularly of those transac-
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 103
work secretly ; if no such danger existed, it is almost incredible that four such
shrewd statesmen, could have been so misled by appearances. To ourselves
we must confess, it has never appeared, that the danger was at all magnified
beyond its reality, or that either the cause of the Scottish Protestants, or the
Crown of Elizabeth could have been upheld, but by the wisdom displayed at
this time by Cecil and his co-adjutors. — But to return to the celebrated
Memorials' of the Secretary before spoken of.
The first paper, we may observe, was drawn up, not as a direction for
England, but for Scotland ; and upon a persuasion, or indeed upon an indis-
putable certainty, that the " ancient weale" of that realm, had been disregarded,
invaded, and almost annihilated, by having been already too much subjected to
the " appointments of France," — " which being an ancient enemy to England,
seeketh always to make Scotland an instrument, to exercise thereby their malice
lions in which Lord Burghley is known to have borne so large a share, without being struck with
the truth of the remark we have thrown out, his whole mind seems to have been applied to the
averting threatened danger from his Country, and from the person of his Sovereign -, he preserved
both from the dangers he foresaw, and because those dangers were turned aside by his prudence,
and sometimes by a recourse to means not free from dissimulation, and what may be called the
stratagems of politics, he has been blamed and vilified ; yet it would be unfair to judge of these
things otherwise than comparatively. The designs he had to avert, depended for their effect upon
the same things. He made his own excuse at the outset of the contest with France in Scotland,
by declaring it to be in his opinion lawful, to use the same measures in defence that the adversary
uses in offence. To this maxim we must look for an explanation of many things that passed
under Elizabeth, and not use terms of harsh construction without manifest occasion. We are quite
aware that while ice represent his actions to be wise, prudent, and even laudable, as necessary to
the defence of his Sovereign or her kingdom ; others will conceive from the mere circumstance
of their havingescaped the dangers he calculated upon, that his wisdom was no better than settled
deceit, and his alleged regard for the safety of his Sovereign and his country, an unfeeling
disregard of the right, liberty, and happiness of others. Thus Catholic writers will constantly
represent his interposition in behalf of the Scottish Protestants, to have been no better than a
mischievous design, to encourage a civil war; and all his endeavours to avoid being deceived by
the French, a most insidious plan, and a most artful attempt to deceive them. This cannot be
helped : we only notice it to guard our readers against an abuse of terms in speaking of the great
man, whose life we are recording ; he had a Sovereign and a kingdom to defend against stratagem,
false professions, and secret conspiracies ; and much secresy, and occasional dissimulation were
but too frequently his only proper means of defence. Walsingham, as well as Cecil, has been
greatly abused for employing spies, yet in Dr. VVotton's celebrated letter to the latter, (Forbes, i. 23.)
speaking of his having heard of some overtures of peace being made, before he received the
Secretary's letter, he remarks, " for every body hath espyes abrode, save we."
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
upon England, and to make a foot-stool thereof to look over England as they
may." Here certainly was the great grievance ; as destructive of the peace and
tranquillity of Scotland as of England ; sufficiently so, to justify the neighbourly
advice contained in the first paper, calculated to put Scotland itself on its guard
against entirely surrendering its " ancient weale," into the desolating hands of
foreigners, and providing as well as it could, against " the greedy and tyranous
affection of France," and " the deceipts and tromperies," of that encroaching
nation. There is no actual disloyalty towards Mary recommended, should she
be found to have a will and power jointly with her husband, to " reform the
misgovernance of the land," or in case she should live to have children, heirs of
her own blood to the Crown.* Due regard is paid to the constitutional rights
arid powers of the three estates of the realm, as well as to the rights and pre-
tensions of the house of Hamilton, the next heir, so long as the Queen continued
childless.
In the second paper, the manifold dangers to England, arising out of the
perplexed state of affairs, are so ably pointed out, that to dispute them, would
* Cecil has been loaded with abuse by different writers, for his conduct to Mary Queen of Scots,
without sufficient attention to circumstances ; he has been supposed to have had it in view to
depose her from the first, by certain passages in his papers and letters, at the commencement of
Elizabeth's reign, but surely it deserves to be considered how much in opposition to the true
interests of Scotland she was placed by her marriage with the King Dauphin (as Francis was
called before the death of his father), and how difficult it must have been at that time to consider
her as the real and proper ruler of Scotland. Not many years had passed, since Cecil had
probably been called, as a member of Parliament, to deliberate upon the celebrated articles of
marriage of Philip and Mary ; framed, as it is generally acknowledged, by Bishop Gardiner : from
these we may form a conjecture, how fit it was to guard a female Sovereign from the effects of
foreign influence. A brief view of some of these articles may serve to shew how far removed
Mary must have been, from the proper tie of connexion between herself and her subjects. Philip
was restrained from advancing any person to any public office or dignity in England, but such as
were natives of the realm, and the Queen's subjects ; he was to admit a set number of English into
his household, whom he should use respectfully, and not suffer to be injured by foreigners ;
he was not to transport the Queen out of England, but at her entreaty, nor any of the issue
begotten on her, who should have their education in England, and should not be suffered but upon
necessity and good reasons to go out of the same, nor then neither, but with the consent of the
English. That the Queen deceasing without children, Philip should not make any claim to the
kingdom, but should leave it freely to him to whom of right it should belong; that he should not
change any thing in the laws, either public or private, nor the immunities and customs of the realm,
but should be bound by oath to confirm and keep them. — How totally different was Mary of
Scotland's contract with Francis !
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 105
be no less than to contradict the strong testimonies to their reality, to be found
in the pages of all the historians of the time, whether English or foreign ; while
the extremities to which England was likely to be driven, by her case becoming
an exception to the strict rules of international law, are very briefly but correctly,
we think, summed up in the two following affirmative propositions, as to the
expediency of England's helping the Nobility and Protestants of Scotland to
expel the French.
" That it is agreable both to the law of God and nature, that every Prynce,
and publyck state shuld defend itself; not only from perils presently seen, but
from dangers that be probably seen to come shortly after.
" And, that Nature and Reason teacheth every person, politick or other, to use
the same manner of defence, that the adversary useth in offence. "
The latter may seem to require some limitations in general, but not as appli-
cable to those times, when it may be almost said there was no law of nations ge-
nerally acknowledged, but that what state, potentate, or government soever should
be found weak enough to be deceived, would be sure to suffer the consequences
of the most profound dissimulation. The coarse remark of Ferdinand of Spain
respecting his incautious neighbour Lewis XII. is but too just a picture of the
continental policy of those times. "The King of France," said he frequently to
his intimate associates, " is fool enough to affirm that I have deceived him once,
the drunken dog lies, I have deceived him twenty times."*
There is one thing more to be noted in one of the memorials ; namely, the
positive assertion of the English title " to the superiority of Scotland." The
authorities for this disputed assumption are in the paper itself severally adduced,
but the importance of the claim, as urged at this particular moment, appears to
• It is the more necessary to dwell upon these things, since, in consequence of the extraordinary
vigilance, prudence, wisdom, and foresight, of Elizabeth's Ministers, and the part they took in
succouring the persecuted Protestants in all countries, they have been particularly marked, as the
disturbers and principal intriguers of Europe ; so much so, that in one rather eminent work, the
Secret History of England, by a Person of Honour, 1702, the author, comparing the contest
between Elizabeth and Mary of Scots to a game at cards, observes, that, though the latter had
all the Kings on her side, and the Pope to pack the cards for her as occasion served, yet Eliza-
beth's advantages were altogether as great, since she kept all the knaves in her hand. The
insinuation is very apparent, but we cannot any further admit the justice of the remark, than to
grant, that in an age of subtlety, state-craft, and political mancEUvre, Elizabeth's Ministers were
never found off their guard, nor incompetent to preserve and protect the Sovereign and the
country they had to defend from attacks as insidious as they were hostile.
VOL. II. P
106 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
have consisted in the right and power it gave, or might be presumed to give,
to England, to rescue Scotland, as a fee, from the hands of France, upon the
same grounds as the Emperor might interpose to protect Milan and Bohemia,
as held of the Empire.*
There is scarcely a word in this paper, that is not of the utmost importance
as regards the just defence of England from the machinations of France, in
virtue of its new connexion with the Crown of Scotland.
But there are other most important papers extant, that should be consulted
by all who would form a just opinion of the actual state of things, at the
commencement of the second year of the Queen's reign : we mean the decla-
ration of the Confederate Lords of Scotland to the Queen of England, of their
taking arms against the Queen Dowager of Scotland and the French, to be
seen in Burnet, III. Part ii. No. 53, p. 360, Oxford Edition, 1816. The
original being among the Cottonian MSS. Caligula B. x. fol. 24. The
Petition of the Confederate Lords may be seen in the same place, to have leave
to sue to their Sovereigns, the King and Queen (of France) " for pacification
and perfect government of the realm, without alteration of the ancient liberties
of Scotland." No. 55, also, being the bond of association, entituled, " Ane
Contract of the Lords and Barons, to defend the liberty of the Evangell of
Christ," is worth attending to ; but, in the appendix to Robertson's History of
Scotland, No. II. is a still more important paper to be seen, printed, as there
alleged, from the Cottonian MSS. Caligula B. ix. 20th Jan. 1559-60, and
said to be a letter of Maitland of Lethington's, thus directed :
" To my loving friend James, be this delivered in London."
We take our extracts of this remarkable letter from Dr. Robertson's History,
more particularly, in order to have an opportunity of clearing up some mistakes
that seem very extraordinary.
In the Cottonian Catalogue we find a paper of the same date, registered
thus, Caligula B. ix. 47.
" A letter, perhaps from John Knox, to a friend in England, vindicating the
Scots from the suspicion of treachery or ingratitude; with an historical
statement of the causes of enmity between the English and Scots; also
pointing out the fatal consequences of abandoning Scotland to the French ;
> With regard to this claim upon Scotland, we had occasion to make some
remarks in our first volume, see pp. 206, 207.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 107
(seemingly an original, but the signature and direction cancelled.) St. Andrews,
Jan. 20, 1559."
The fact seems to be, that neither Knox nor Maitland was the author of
the paper, but Cecil himself.* He wished to have the Scottish Protestants
assisted effectually : some of the Council were anxious to prevent it, and to
turn the Queen's attention away from the real dangers with which she was
threatened. Cecil wished her of course to be more rightly informed, and as
the Lords of the Congregation were about to send Maitland to treat with the
English Council upon the question of assistance, he was anxious of course to
have the case fully and fairly represented to the Queen ; he therefore prepared
the document of which we have just given an account, and forwarded it to
Sadler and Croft, to be offered to Maitland in their own names, as the best
ground of a petition from the Congregation to Elizabeth for effectual aid.
Maitland appears readily to have adopted it, and procured the Lords of the
Congregation to do so also, as a just representation of their own case and their
own feelings ; in this letter, therefore, we find all the suggestions of Cecil
embodied, and admirably set forth.
An excellent account is given of the ancient enmities of the two nations,
which originally drove the Scots to accept the proffered friendship of France ;
of their subsequent discovery and experiment of the ambitious views, and the
treacherous conduct of their foreign allies, and of the hearty desire now felt,
viz. Jan. 20, 1559, to renounce that alliance, and be taken under the protection
of England ; a statement sufficient, we should think, to satisfy any reasonable
mind, that the views of the Confederate Lords, &c. were truly patriotic, as far as
regarded the liberties and ancient laws of their country, and that England had
just cause not to allow a party so friendly to herself, and a confederation so
important, as a check to the measures of the French, in such a particular
crisis, to be discomfited, or brought under subjection to a foreign power, acting
in the name of their lawful Sovereign indeed, but to all appearance against
her true interests, and the best and most manifest interests of no inconsiderable
portion of her subjects.
The avowed object of this important letter, was to remove the distrust, that
some persons in England had evinced, of the fidelity of the Confederates, in
case they should receive from England the succour they implored. If the
* See the letter from Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir James Croft to Mr. Secretary Cecil,
Sadler's State Papers, vol. i. 602, No. cliii.
108
'.MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560- ^
nature of the cause, and present state of our country, says the writer, be
con dered, «I doubt not but judgment, sal be able to bamsh ^strust; and
e ling of the original disposition of the French to be friend, with the Scots
aganst England, he observes, "The French zour auncxent enemyes con-
fdering well how nature had sa placed us in a island wifc zow, that na
nation was able sa to annoye England as we being eneymies, sought to jome u.
to they* in ligue, tending by that meane to detourrre zour armyes from the
invasion of France, &c.-this was the beginning of our confederacy with
France—The maist part, of all querells betwixt ws since that tyme, at
quhen the provocation came on our syde, hes ever fallen out by *%r procure-
ment rather than any one caus off ourselfes : and quhensaever we brack the
peace, it come partly by theyr intysements, partly to eschew the conquest in-
tended by that realm. But now hes God's providence sa altered the case, zea
changed it to the plat contrary, that now hes the Frensche, taken zour place, and
we off very judgment, becum desyrous to have zow in theyr ro-wme. Our Eyes are
opened, we espy how uncareful they have been of our weile at all tymes, how
they made us ever to serve thyr turne, drew us in maist dangerous weys for theyr
commodity and nevertheless wad not styck, oft tymes, against natour of the hgue,
to contrak peace, leaving ws in weyr. We see that theyr support, off late zeres,
was not grantit for any affection they bare to ws, for pytie they had of our estate,
for recompense off the lyke friendship schawin to them in tyme off thyr afflictions,
but for ambition, and insaciable cupidite to reygne, and to mak Scotland ane
accessory to the crown of France.— We feared ze meant the conquest off
Scotland, and they are planely fallen to that work.— Quhais aid could we
implore, being destitute of zour friendship, gif they off new wald attempt
theyr formar enterprise? — I wald ze should not esteme ws sa barayne of judg-
ment, that we cannot forese our owne perril ; or sa foolishe that we will not
study by all gode means to entertayne that thing may be our safetye, quhilk
consistes all in the relaying of zour friendship.— I pray zow consider in lyke
case, when in the days of zour princes off maist noble memory, King Henry
the VIII. and King Edward the VI. meanes were opened of amitye betwixt
baith realms; was not at all tymes the difference of religion the onely stay they
wer not embraced? Did not the craft of our clergy and power of theyr
adherents subvert the devises of the better sort? But now has God off his
mercy removed that block furth off the way : now is not theyr practise lyke to
tak place any mare, when we ar comme to a conformity off doctrine, and profes
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 109
the same religion with zow, quhilk I take to be the straytest knot of amitye
can be devised ; — / pray zow, let not zour men dryve tyme in consultation
quhether ze sail support ws or no. Seyng the mater speaketh for itself, that ze
mon take upon zow the defence of our caus, giff ze. have any respect for zowr
awne weill. Their preparatives in France, and levying of men in Germany,
(quheyroff I am lately advertised) ar not altogydder ordeyned for us, ze ar the
mark they shote at ; they seke our Realme, but for ane entry to sours. Giff
they should directly schaw hostilite to zow, they knaw zo wald mek redy for
theyme; therefor they do, by indirect meanes, to blind zow, the thing, they dare
not as zit planely attempte. They seme to invade us to th' end, that having
assembled theyr hale forces sa nere zour bordours, they may unlock it to attack
zow : It is ane off theyr aid fetches, making a schew to one place, to lyght on
ane other. — It is grosse ignorance to misknaw, what all nations planely speke
off. Tak hede ze say not hereafter, 'had I wist;' ane uncomely sentence, to
precede off a wyse man's mouth.
" Let not this occasion, sa happely offered, escape Zow ? Giff ze do, neglecting
the present opportunite, and hoping to have ever gode luk comme sleaping upon
zow, it is to be feared zour enemye ware to great, and sa strang, that afterwards
quhen ze wald, ze sail not be able to put him down ; and then, to zour smart,
after the tyme ze will acknowledge zour error, ze have felt, by experience, quhat
harme cometh off oversight, and trusting to rour enemy's promisses ; We offer zow
the occasion, quheyrby zour former losses may be repayred ; Quhilk gif ze let
over slyde, suffering ws to be owerrun, quha then, I pray zow, sail stay the
Frensche, that they sail not invade zow, in zour own boundes, sick is theyr lust to
regne, that they can neyther be content with theyr fortune present, nor rest and
be satisfied when they have gode luk, but will still follow on, having in theyr awne
brayne conceaved the image of sa great a conquest, quhat think ye sail be the end ?
Is ther any of sa small jugement, that he doth not foresee already, that theyr hail
force sail then be bent against zow ? — It was not theyr great rediness for weyr
made theym to tak this mater on hand, at this tyme, but rather a vayne trust in
theyr awne policy, thinking to have found na resistance, theyr opinion has
deceaved theym, and that makes them now amased. — Gif the like occasion wer
offered to the Frenche against zow, wey, how gladly would they embrace it. Are
ze not eschamed of zour sleuth, to spare theym that hes already compassed zour
destruction, giff they wer able ? consider with yourself quhilk is to be choysed? to
weyr against theym without zour realme or within ? Giff quhill ye sleape we sal
HO MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
be over throwne, then sail they not fayle to sute zou in zour awne countrey, and
use ws as a fote stole to overloke zow ; But some will say, perhaps they meane it
not. It is foly to think they waid not giff they war able, quhen before hand they
stick not to giff zour armes, and usurpe the style of zour crown. — Let zou not be
moved for that they terme ws rebelles, and diffames our just querrell with the
name of conspiracy against our soverayne. It is hir hyenes right we manetayne.
It is the liberty of hir realme we study to preserve, with the hazard of our lyves.
We ar not (God knoweth) comme to this point for wantones, as men impatient
ofrewl, or willing to schake off the yoke of government, but ar drawne to it by
necessite, to avoyde the tyrannic of strangeeres seaking to defraude ws of lawful
government. — We mean no wise to subtrak our obedience from our soveraine to
defraude hir hyenes of her dew reverence, rents, and revenues of hir crown. We
seke nothing, but that Scotland may remaine, as of before, a fre realme,
rewlit by hir hyenes, and hir ministeres borne men of the sam; and that the
succession of the crown may remane, with the lawful blode. — I wold wiss that
ze and they that ar learned, sould rede the twa former orations of Demosthenes,
called Olynthyaca3 and consider quhat counsal that wyse Oratour gave to the
Athenians his countrymen, in lyke case ; quhilk hes so great affinite with this
cause of ours, that every word thereoff myght be applyed to our purpos. There
may ze learne of him quhat advise is to be followed, when zour nyghtbours hous
is on fyre."
We have been the more careful to point out the exact grounds upon which
England, at this time, interfered with the affairs of Scotland, and stood forward
to support a party opposed to the Government of that country, because, without
a perfect understanding of those grounds, the means resorted to may be misjudged,
and any interposition at all, on the part of England, deprecated as improper,
presumptuous, and not defensible on any principle of the law of nations. We
have endeavoured to shew, by referring to the papers above, that the course taken
by England, was regarded as entirely and necessarily defensive, as well by Scots
(and certainly no contemptible party of Scots), as by the English Government
itself, * We have, by no means, done justice to the papers themselves, as most
' We might add by the French Ambassador in London. See the letter from M. de Noailles
to M. de Oysel, in Scotland, 22 December 1559. Forbes, i. 284. Though the letter we have
been citing, is supposed to have originated with Sir William Cecil himself, yet its ready adoption
by Maitland, and the Heads of the Congregation, is sufficient to give it the stamp of a truly
Scottish document.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. HI
important political and historical documents, by our garbled extracts, but as they
may be read at length in the books referred to, or in the originals still extant ; we
have forborne to crowd our pages with more than seemed entirely necessary to
the purposes of the history before us : but from this time, and from the first steps
taken to prevent the French establishing, to the great danger of England, an ab-
solute power in Scotland, scarcely any thing seems to have passed but with the
knowledge, or under the special superintendance and direction of the subject of
this Memoir. To him all letters seem to have been in the first instance addressed,
or through others communicated ; every military movement, every financial
regulation, every appointment of ministers or messengers, every consideration of
the exact posture of affairs, as regarded either country, seem to have been with
one consent submitted to him. " Secretary Cecil," says Camden, " was for his
singular wisdom employed by Queen Elizabeth, as her chiefest minister, in these
' and all other matters." To use a very common, but significant expression, he
seems to have been the life and soul of all proceedings ; no very enviable situa-
tion, but one, from which, as it would appear, he could never afterwards, with any
safety to his country or his Sovereign, much less to his own ease, effectually
withdraw.
The first thing to be done with a view to the Scottish affairs, in this second
year of her Majesty's reign, seems to have been the sending down such persons
to the north, as might be expected best to watch the opportunities of assisting
the confederated Protestants, and to prepare such forces by land and sea, as
might prevent any fresh reinforcements arriving from France, or any great
advantages to be gained over the Protestants by the French forces already in
Scotland, and under the direction and command of the Queen Dowager.
The following entries among Lord Burghley's notes, may shew what was done.*
* In the first year of the Queen's reign, the marches, as well as Berwick, appear to have been
entrusted to bad hands ; the Earl of Northumberland particularly, and Lord Dacres, both Catholics,
and of course unfriendly to the Scottish Congregation, and the designs of the English Council, to
render them assistance ; of these things Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir James Croft had great occasion
to complain. Lord Dacres, in particular, in order to alienate the Scots in general from England,
encouraged, or at least permitted, the English borderers of his march to enter Scotland, and
provoke hostilities ; and their attacks being particularly directed against the estates of Lord
Maxwell, a zealous reformer, who by that means was kept from joining the Lords of the Congre-
gation ; the intent and purpose of such proceedings, became but too apparent ; the Graymes,
or Graemes, appear to have been the chief transgressors. — See Sadler's State Papers, i. 452. 463.
469. 476.
H2 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
" November 17. ao. 2do. Eliz. Consultation for order of the realm, viz. D.
of Norfolk to be lieutenant in the north, Lord Grey, lord warden of the
east marches.
" December 16. William Winter sent with a navy of ships to the north seas,
and so he went to the Firth.
" — 25. The D. of Norfolk lieutenant-general in the north ; the Lord Grey
then was warden of the east and middle marshes. Sir Ralph Sadler adjoined
to the D. of Norfolk.
" The same day the D. of Norfolk sent as lieutenant of the north to
Newcastle."
In Haynes's collection of the Burghley papers now in the Museum, we have
many important letters, particularly from the Duke of Norfolk, to Mr. Secretary
Cecil, upon the first arrival of this commission in the north parts ; but before
we proceed to relate the course of their proceedings, it may be proper to take
account of the exact posture of affairs in Scotland, as between the Lords of the
Congregation (for so the heads of the Protestant party began now to be called),
and the Regent.
We have already shewn how disingenuous the conduct of the Regent had
been towards the Protestants, so soon as she felt herself able to do without
them ; that is, so soon as ever she was reconciled to the Hamiltons and Popish
clergy, with the Archbishop of St. Andrews at their head ; and thereby prepared
on all hands, by furthering the Pope's cause, to promote the views of her
brothers of the house of Lorrain, equally bent upon obtaining the rule in Scot-
land, and extirpating heresy. Cause enough was given to the Protestants, on the
score of religion only, to prepare for their own defence ; but it was by no
means unreasonable for them to stand forth as the champions of their native
country, the defenders of her ancient honours, rights, and privileges, against a
foreign court prepared to bring them all under her own yoke,* and to trample
• Dr. Robertson is very eloquent upon this double object of their exertions. — " She" [the
Regent], says he, " found, however, that the preservation of the Protestant religion, their zeal for
which had at first roused the leaders of the Congregation to take arms, was not the only object
they had now in view ; they were animated with the warmest love of civil liberty, which they
conceived to be in imminent danger from the attempts of the French forces ; and these two
passions mingling, added reciprocally to each other's strength. Together with more enlarged
notions in religion, the Reformation filled the human mind with more liberal and generous
sentiments concerning civil government ; the genius of Popery is extremely favourable to the
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 113
upon all who should seem in any manner to resent or resist its spreading
usurpations. As to the extirpation of heresy, the Regent, urged on by her
foreign relations, made no secret. To the expostulations of the deserted
Protestants, she gave no other answer, than that she saw reason to break all her
princely promises to them, and that henceforth heresy, only another name for
protestantism, was to find no indulgence.
It is needless to go far into the prevarications and treachery of this altered
Princess, when, submitting her own better judgment to the will of her brothers,
she assumed the character of a professed persecutor of Protestants, and promoter
of foreign interests.* The accounts of broken treaties, and violated faith, may
be found in other books; we shall, as an introduction to what is to follow
regarding the interference of England, copy from Haynes's Burghley papers, a
very short remonstrance of the Protestants, to some proceedings on the part of
the Regent, clearly indicative of hostile designs on the part of France (and
unconstitutional as such), with the Regent's answer. At this time, it should be
observed, many of the first nobility of Scotland, were decidedly on the side of
the Protestants-! The cause of remonstrance, was the occupation of the
important town of Leith, by French soldiers and their families, to the absolute
dispossession of the native and ancient inhabitants, who were driven from their
houses, and left to wander where they could. The date of the Remonstrance
is October 19, 1559, rather more than a month before the termination of the first
year of Queen Elizabeth's reign.
" Yt wyll please your Grace come to your Remembrans, howe at our laste
convention in Hamilton, we required your Hieghnis in most humble maner, to
desyste from the fortifienge of this towne of Leyth, then interprysed and
begon, which appered to us, and yet dothe, a manyfeste entrie to a conqueste,
power of Princes." We cannot continue the extract ; but much more that is extremely forcible and
good, to the same purpose, may be read in the original. — History of Scotland, vol. i. anno 1559.
* Dr. Cook's History of the Reformation may be consulted for a very dispassionate account
of the unfair, rather treacherous, dealings, of the Regent and her party, after she had made peace
with the clergy.
f They had indeed been lately joined by the heads of the House of Hamilton, the Duke of
Chatelherault, and soon afterwards his son the Earl of Arran; the latter of whom having
rendered himself so obnoxious in France, to the Princes of Lorrain, on account of his attachment
to the reformed religion, as to be in danger of his life, had made his escape from that country,
and passing through England been encouraged to oppose to the utmost of his power in Scot-
land, the encroachments of France.
VOL. II. Q.
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
and overthrow to our liberties, and altogether agaynste the lawes and custumes
of this realme ; seeing it was begone and yet contynuethe withoute anye advice
or consent of the Nobilite and Councell thereof. Wherefore accordinge to our
Deutie we owe to our Common Weele, now, as oft before, we most humbly
require your Grace to cawse your Strangers* and Souldiars whatsomever,
withowte delaye depart oute of the sayde town of Leyth ; the strengthe of the
which not only dystroyethe that, but feareth as well the inhabytants as other
Schottishe men, our Souvereyn Ladies lyege subjects, of whatsomever estate
thei be, may resorte thereunto in maner accustomed to have their lawful
* Chalmers, in his Life of Mary Queen of Scots, is quite indignant at tlie thoughts of the
French soldiers being spoken of as strangers Of foreigners, because on the marriage of Mary and
Francis, it had been settled that the natives of Scotland should be naturalized in France, and
those of France in Scotland ; by this act, says he, " Scotland and France were identified, for the
benefit of both." He could not possibly have said more in vindication of the policy of Cecil, and
of the Protestants of Scotland : this identification of the two countries was the work of the Guises,
and "through them" (the greatest tyrants and bigots in Europe) "the liberties of the people of
both countries," if we may give credit to Mr. Chalmers, "were to be enlarged." It is distressing
to meet with such absurdities in a work, which, from the literary fame of the author, has been read
and admired, we are sorry to say, by a large number of unwary readers — ourselves among the
rest, before we had an opportunity of examining narrowly into the merits of the case — such is the
amount and value of desultory reading. — As he is careful to condemn, in most opprobrious terms,
the public measures of England, in regard to Scotland, not only under Elizabeth, but under
Henry and Edward, that is, " during Mary's infancy, for the subduction of Scotland," as he calls it,
" by that alien and corrupt power;" we trust we shall now be excused for entering so far back in
our first volume, into the real history of the two countries, in a Life of Lord Burghley. — We are
willing to allow for national prejudices, but are persuaded (as indeed we have endeavoured to
shew through the whole of that volume), that the Scotch aro wrong in imputing to England evil
designs against their country or countrymen, as distinct from the French. Had it not been for
the latter, the two crowns and the two kingdoms, would probably have been united, and the
people of both countries brought into a state of peace and harmony, a full century before either
of those events actually took place ; but the Scots seem so resolved to throw the blame of every
thing that came to pass on the English, rather than on the French, that the first thing Goodall
(in his Vindication of Mary) finds to allege against Murray, is, that in the time of Edward VI.,
to whom at a very early age he had become known, " he had declared himself, to be against the
Trench, an expression unknown among Scotsmen in former times, but which had then lately come
in use among some persons, and chiefly among the men of Fife, who were forming designs for
selling or enslaving their native country to the English." It is curious after this, to find that
Murray should have been the very person, in Elizabeth's reign, who stood forward to prevent
his native country being sold to, or enslaved by, the French.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BlfRGHLEY. 115
traffique.* Assuringe your Heighenesse that yf ye in refusynge the same, declare
your evle minde towards the common weale of this realme, or nation, and
libertie of the !»ame, we wyll wythowte delay, mean, as of before, the cawse
unto the whole Nobilite and Communaltie thereof. Requiring most humbly
your Grace' answer in haste with this beerer, becawse the Fact proceeds dailie
to the conqueste, as apperethe to all men.| And so after our humble commen-
dations, of our service unto your Hieghenes, we commende your Grace to the
eternall protection of God. —
"At Edenbourge, L9th Oct. 1559. Your Graces humble and obedient
Serviteurs."
The Regent's reply was as follows : dictated no doubt by a furious bigot,
placed at her right hand by the Guises, Pelleve or Pelleuce, Bishop of Amiens,
servilely devoted to his employers, and who had been specially sent by them to
Scotland, to stir up the Queen Dowager to the most outrageous measures.- —
'•' After Commendations, we have receaved your Lettre of Edenbourge
the 19th of this instant, which apperethe to us rather to have come from a
Prince to his subjectes, than from subjects to them that berythe autorite — for
answer whereof we have presently sent unto you this Berrer, Leon Heraulde
Kynge of Armes, sufficiently instructed, with our mynde, to whom ye shall
gyve Credunce. MARIA R.
" At Leythe, 21st of Oct. 1559."J
The Herald so sent appears to have charged them, upon their obedience, to
depart every man to his own house:
* In a letter from Balnaves to Sir Ralph Sadler, he writes, " This enterprise of Leith bathe
inflamed the harts of our people to a woonderful hatred and despite of Fraunce, wherethrough
I think there shall follow a playne defection from Fraunce, for ever." This letter is dated '23d
September, 1559.— Sadler's State Papers, i. 462.
+ Chalmers, who objects so greatly to the French soldiers being called strangers, because on
the marriage of Mary and Francis, the subjects of France were naturalized ; forgets that by the
terms of the same marriage, the liberties and laws of Scotland were to be preserved. See his first
vol. p. 115.
I Sadler and Croft, in a letter to the Secretary, September 27, 1559, report, that the Duke
of Chatelherault sent word to the Regent (before he jointd the Protestants), that, it was much
misliked that the French did fortify at Leith, requiring her to stay it, or else she must be sure
that the nobility of Scotland would not suffer nor indure it. " Whereunto she answered, that it
was as mete and lawfull for her daughter to fortifie where pleased her in her own realrae, as it was
for him to build at Hamilton ; and she would not stay it, unless she were by force impeched."-
State Papers, i. 467.
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
We need not surely make many comments upon this abrupt answer to the
patriotic remonstrance of the Protestants.* Conquest seemed evidently to be in
contemplation : the conquest of their country ; and as a very manifest conse-
quence, if it took place, their own destruction, or ruin. The Nobles of
Scotland, as Robertson justly observes, had not been accustomed to such
treatment, even from their own monarchs ; whom, according to the spirit of their
peculiar aristocracy, they had often restrained and controlled ; and they could be
little expected therefore to bear such indignities at the hands of a foreigner. A
Convention was speedily called, with as much attention as could be expected,
under such circumstances, to the ancient forms of proceeding ; and in this
assembly, consisting of Peers, Barons, and Representatives of Boroughs,
animated by the presence, and no doubt highly stimulated by the zealous and
uncompromising advice and exhortations of Knox, who appeared as the repre-
sentative of the reformed clergy ;| it was determined, without one dissenting suf-
frage, that the Queen should no longer be allowed to act as Regent, so much to
the detriment of the kingdom ; having intimated to them that she did not hold
herself bound to keep faith with them, they considered their allegiance at an
end. They formally therefore suspended her from the office, in the name of
the King and Queen, to whom they professed all duty and submission ; but in
whose absence, and to preserve the Constitution inviolate, they undertook to
act as the natural guardians and protectors of the kingdom. " The born
counsellors of the realm," as Lord Ruthven is reported to have called them, in
the following question proposed to the assembly, in which he happened to
preside: "Whether she who had so contemptuously refused the humble
request of the born counsellors of the realm ; she also being only a Regent,
whose pretences threatened to subvert the liberty of the commonwealth, should
be permitted so tyrannically to domineer over them?" — Cook's Reformation,
ii. 192. ; see also the act of suspension, p. 198. and the able remarks of the
author upon it, 202. Their resistance to the authority of the Regent, however,
had little effect on the latter ; the French garrison at Leith defied their feeble
endeavours to remove them, and entirely refused to depart the kingdom. The
measure was certainly a violent one, and the French had managed to make it
* Chalmers speaks with disdain of the efforts of the reformed party to maintain their liberties,
" against all law ;" but it was against French domination.
t Knox's speech, as reported by Dr. McCrie, and Dr. Cook, after Wodrow, was far from
improper or disloyal; indeed remarkably guarded.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 117
as unwarrantable as they could, by naturalizing the subjects of the two
kingdoms reciprocally ; so that the French in Scotland, would not submit to be
called or regarded as foreigners. In such an emergency the application of the
confederated Nobles, to England, was natural and (as far as possible) necessary.
We have copied the letter of Maitland of Lethington, as containing a very just
description of the actual posture of affairs, and as proceeding from a man highly
competent to understand the purposes of the French, both against Scotland and
England. In fact, he held a high station in the former country, being the Queen's
Secretary; and if, in communicating so freely with England, he should be thought
to have betrayed the confidence of his royal mistress, we may surely be allowed
to say there are some interests paramount to those of the mere possessor of the
throne.* Interests, which, if the possessor of the throne be induced to abandon,
or oppose, by ill advice at home, but much more through foreign interference, it
belongs to others to maintain and support, to the utmost of their means.
Castelnau, the French minister, who was far from approving the conduct of the
Princes of Lorrain towards Scotland, acknowledges, with his usual candour, as
Dr. Robertson says, that the Scots declared war against the Queen Regent,
rather from a desire of vindicating their civil liberties, than from any motive of
religion. When the Earl of Glencairn and Sir Hugh Campbell, in a conference
with the Queen Dowager, in behalf of the Protestants, heard her declare, that
the promises of Princes should not be urged upon them, when they could not
conveniently fulfil them, they are stated to have made this memorable reply —
" If you have resolved to keep no faith with your subjects, we will renounce
our allegiance, and leave you to reflect upon the calamities which will thus be
entailed on the country." — Cook, i. 69. Maitland, according to Robertson, had
remonstrated against the violent measures of the Regent and her family, till he
thought his life in danger.
The application of the Scottish Protestants to Elizabeth seems to be a case of
this description ; Mary's foreign connexions were, under the pretended sanction
of her name and authority, rudely trampling upon the rights and liberties
of Scotland.f They were manifestly looking towards England, as the end
* Of England's interference, Chalmers speaks as follows : — " Elizabeth thus, by means of a
faction, endeavoured to overrule the authority of the estates of the realm. This was sufficiently
abominable in her ; but it was still more base in the odious man who acted as her instrument."
f In the minute (Sadler's State Papers, i. 416, No. xxii.) addressed to the Lords of the Con-
gregation, 1559, the encroachment of the French is made the great point to be considered ;
118 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
of their conquests, and triumph over Protestantism, and what mercy could the
Scottish Reformists expect, standing in the way of such a revolution? It was
quite as natural for England to listen to their application and espouse their cause,
as it was for them to open such a communication ; and in order to be upon
a perfect understanding with the reformed party in Scotland, we find, from Lord
Burghley's notes, that in January, 1559-60, " Lyddyngton," the writer of the
letter to which we have referred above, " was at Westminster to be conferred
withall for Scottish matters ;" nor, according to the same notes, does he appear
to have "returned to Scotland," before the 18th day of February. On the 27th of
which month a regular Convention seems to have been formed, between the
Queen's northern Commissioners and the heads of the CONGREGATION. Lord
Burghley's note of which is to the following effect.
" Feb. 27, The accord made by the Duke of Norfolk at Barwick, with the L.
James, L. Rutten, L. Petarro, and Mr. Maxwell." This accord held out a promise
to the Protestants of open assistance.*
speaking of the aid to be solicited of the Nobility in general, " whereunto," it is said, " their
natural love to their country ought to induce them, rather than suffer the violent conquest of the
French, which undoubtedly do mean to subvert and extinct the native blood of Scotland, inhe-
ritable to the same, if the French Qnene, your Soverain, should die without issue, and to annex
that realm perpetually to the Crown of France, which we think all true Scottish men should
naturally detest and abhorre, and whylst time serveth, prevent and foresee the same."
• The most material articles of this celebrated Convention, were as follow: 1. Elizabeth took
into her protection the kingdom of Scotland, the Duke of Chatelherault and his party; in order
to maintain Scotland in its liberties, as long as the marriage of Mary with the King of France
subsisted, and a year longer. 2. She engaged to send them succours, and to continue the same
till the French were driven out of the kingdom. 3. She bound herself to make no agreement
with France till the French and Scotch were agreed to let the kingdom of Scotland enjoy its full
liberty. 4. She engaged not to abandon the Confederates, as long as they owned Mary for
their Queen, and endeavoured to maintain the rights of the Crown. 5. That if the English took
places in Scotland from France, these places should be demolished or delivered to the Duke of
Chatelherault, at his choice ; and that the English should make no fortifications. 6. The Duke
and his party pledged themselves to join their forces to those of England. It was farther stipu-
lated : 7. That they should not suffer any union of Scotland and France, but what then existed.
8. That the enemies of England should be the enemies of the Scotch. 9. That if England were
attacked by France, the Lords should furnish the Queen with 2000 foot and 2000 horse. 10. That
if the invasion should be in the North, they should join their forces to those of the Queen at
their own expense. 11. That the Lords should give hostages to remain in the hands of the
Queen of England, as long as the Queen of Scots' marriage with the King of France subsisted.
Lastly. The confederates protested that they would continue loyal to the Queen of Scotland, and
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 119
Though the English court appeared willing to accede to the application of the
Scottish Protestants, it was extremely difficult to know how, or to what extent, it
might best render them the succour and support solicited.* It was manifestly
imprudent to provoke a war with France. It was equally imprudent to shew too
great forwardness to enter Scotland, with an armed force, after the jealousies that
had been excited in former reigns, by the claim, not yet abandoned, of a feudal
superiority. It was prudent to leave the Scots to expel the French by their own
exertions if possible, and to render such aid only, as might least excite the suspi-
cions of the French party. Both money and strength were wanting ; the former
might be supplied ;f the latter not so easily, except by preventing any
accession of strength to the adverse party ; for which purpose it was that Admiral
Winter was sent, as Lord Burghley's notes assert, with "a navy of ships to the
North seas, and even into the Frith of Forth," where reinforcements from France
were-known to be daily expected. The presence of the English fleet was intended
to deter the French from entering ; but not to begin a conflict, without extreme ne-
cessity. This policy however did not suit the parties it was intended to assist. If the
fleet did nothing, it was soon found that its presence would only depress the ar-
dour of the Protestants, who were hard pressed by the Government, and prevent the
to the King her husband, in every thing that did not tend to the subversion of the laws. See
Cook's Reformation in Scotland, after Knox, with Knox's judicious preamble, vol. ii. pp. 254, 5.
* The delicacy of the case is well stated by Sir R. Sadler in his report to the Secretary,
of his conference with Balnaves, Sept. 1559. " Marry we told him they were wise men, and
coulde consider, as well as we, what might be done by her Highnesse in that behalf, considering
that albeit the cause was grounded uppon a good and godly foundacion, to extirpe idolatry, and
advaunce Criste's trew religion ; and also for the preservation of the fredom of their Country,
and to deliver the same from foreyn governement, as in conscience they are bound to do ; yet
the worlde can make nae other exposicyon of it, but that they be as it were a faction gathered
together, contending agenst thautoritye: and who the Quene's Majestie may seame to mayn-
teyne them in such a case, we doubted not but he, being a wise man, could wey the same as
depely as we did."
f See letter from Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir Jas. Croft, to Mr. Secretary Cecil, Sadler's State
Papers, i. 399. and No. xii. p. 402. from Secretary Cecil to Sir Ralph Sadler. "The
French make many shews of great good will towards us : wherin, notwistanding, we be tought
not to be deceived." — " The French were embarked (for Scotland) the xxth of this month
(August 1559), being in number 14 sayles, but as yet I have no knoledg certan of their passing
by, there is 1000 pykes and 1000 harquebusiers. One Octavian an old Millenor (Milanese) of
this court hath chief charge." — This Octavian shortly afterwards arrived at Leith with a regiment
of French soldiers ; but this was a part only of the reinforcement intended. The rest were
dispersed in a storm.
120 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
neutrals, of -Hjhich there were many watching for what might come to pass, from
joining them. The Secretary was decidedly for supporting the Congregation, and
anxious in every way to be rightly informed of their precise wants, expectations,
and intentions ; but the Queen very early proved herself to be her own Prime
Minister, and capable of throwing impediments in the way of the best concerted
counsels. The pecuniary succours required alarmed her prudence, and rendered
such supplies more scanty and uncertain than the emergency of the case seemed
to demand. Nor was her Majesty clear from the adverse practices of those of the
Privy Council, who had been the servants of her sister and Philip ; and who were
far from wishing well to the Protestant cause. Lord John Grey complains of
the interference of these counsellors, whom he calls P/iilippians, from their
attachment to the King of Spain, in a curious letter to the Secretary, dated from
Pyrgo (the family seat), and beginning thus — " Cousin Cecill, I heartily thanke
you for your letters and friendshipp dayle sent and shewed, the continuanns
whereof with all my heart I require, and to be playne with you so muche the
rather, for that I well understand ye are the only mayntayner of Gode's cause,
and the Defender of your Countrie." — April 20, 1560. See also McCrie's Life
of Knox, where, noticing the backwardness of Elizabeth to assist the Congrega-
tion effectually, partly from her extreme caution and parsimony, and partly from
the influence of some of her Counsellors, at the very time when the French envoys
were seeking to persuade her to desert the cause; he adds, " at last she listened
to the advice of her ablest Counsellors, and resolved to prosecute the war with
vigour. No sooner did she evince this determination, than the French Court
yielded to all her demands." — Vol. i. 319. It is curious to compare with this
the account given by Throckmorton, in a letter to the Queen, of a conversation
he had had with the Cardinal Lorrain, relative to a seizure made of some of his
English dispatches, which were supposed to have passed into the Cardinal's
hands. In this conversation his Eminence, it seems, complained greatly of the
young Counsellors whom Elizabeth was disposed to trust more than those who
were "elder in Government and of more experience;" he no doubt would have
rather had her listen to the P/iilippians. "His countenance and gestures in this
talk," says Throckmorton, " were so demure and grave, mixed with a kind of
pitiful plaint, that they would have persuaded a man, that had not well known him
within and without, and known what a Frenchman is in a little adversity.''
Forbes, i. 423, 424. The Queen was backward to render assistance also, pro-
bably, from her knowledge of the ill state of her kingdom to maintain a war,
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 121
if she committed herself too far, and because she judged that information was
sought through a channel obnoxious to her feelings. Knox had fallen into such
disgrace with her, by his book against the regimen of women,* that he could
not obtain leave to visit England. He penned indeed an apology to her Majesty ;
but so awkwardly or injudiciously, as to induce his biographer, Dr. McCrie,
to think it never reached her Majesty's hands; owing to the care and better
judgment of Cecil, to whom it was intrusted : not that the Secretary wished
to impede the reconciliation, if it could have been accomplished, but that he
judged the letter might defeat its own purposes, and be ill received, as had been
the case with Luther's apologetical letter to her father ; otherwise Knox's infor-
mation was considered to be of such importance, that upon an expectation of
meeting and conferring with him, Cecil came as far as Stamford, unknown to
the Queen, for the express purpose ; but it was not in the power of the Reformer
at that time to get so far.f It would seem indeed that they had met once before
* It may be added, by his republican tenets, and Genevan discipline, " of all others," (writes
the Secretary to Sir R. Sadler and Sir Jas. Croft, Oct. 31st, 1559,) " Knoxces name, if it be
not Goodman's, is most odiouse here, and therefore I wish no mention of hym hither."
t See McCrie's Life of Knox, i. 288. 290. where the author endeavours to excuse his
becoming occasionally a politician," it being difficult to preserve Christian integrity and simplicity
amidst the crooked wiles of political intrigue." Of his communications with Elizabeth's Com-
missioners, see Sadler's State Papers, 1659, 60. Knox communicated with the English Ministers,
under the assumed name of John Sinclair; he seems to have expected more from them than
could reasonably be asked, and to have conducted himself with less caution than the state of
things required. — Sadler's State Papers, i. 523. His courage, however, at all events, deserves
praise ; " I have need," he writes to Railtou, " of a good and an assured horse, for great watch
is laid for my apprehension, and large money promised till any that shall kyll me." — The
Secretary however distrusted his prudence. " Surely I like not Knoxces audacite," says Cecil,
in the postscript of a letter, in Nov. 1559, to Sir R. Sadler ; " his writings do no good here,
and therefore I do rather suppress them, and yet I meane not but that ye should contynue in
sending them." He might indeed very reasonably wish not to have Knox's opinions wholly
kept from him; for at times none could judge more properly of the extreme importance of the
crisis to which things had been brought. The Protestant Lords indeed, while Knox was
abroad, had particularly consulted him upon that nice point of resistance to supreme rulers ; and
he had submitted it, it seems, to the judgment of the most learned on the Continent. Soon
after they had agreed to the marriage of their young Queen to the Dauphin of France, the
Scots began to be jealous of the designs of the French court against their liberties and inde-
pendence. Their jealousies increased, after the Regency was transferred to the Queen Dowager,
who was wholly devoted to the interest of France, and had contrived, under different pretexts,
to keep a body of French troops in the kingdom: "The Reformer," says his learned biographer,
VOL. II. R
J22 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560-
and conferred together, for Knox arrived in Scotland from Geneva, on the 2d
of May, 1559, and is said to have seen Cecil on his passage, and to have become
fully acquainted with his views.— (Sadler's State Papers, i. 445.) Of Knox's
real opinions we have a good account, in the able work of his biographer, Dr.
McCrie ; to whose pages we must refer, for many excellent and judicious remarks
on the course of events at this time, particularly in Scotland.
We have mentioned that besides the Duke of Chatelherault, the Congregation
in the course of the year 1559, obtained the countenance and assistance of his
son, the Earl of Arran ; and as Lord Burghley has been much blamed by certain
writers, for the part he took in the return of this young Lord to his native country,
we shall endeavour to set the matter in as clear a light as we can. — That he
arrived at a very critical moment is most certain; that he was obliged to be
smuggled as it were into Scotland, is also most certain, passing thither through
England under the feigned name of Beaumont, and running many risks of
discovery, before he reached Hamilton, his father's palace. It would seem
strange, that a person of such high connexions, should have been so little at
liberty to enter his native country, and that Lord Burghley in particular, for
assisting him to return, should, with many writers have incurred such obloquy
as is known to be the case. It has been considered, indeed, as entirely a scheme
Dr. McCrie, " displayed his moderation, and the soundness of his principles, in the advice which
he gave at this critical period — he did not attempt to inflame the irascible minds of the Nobility,
by aggravating the mal-administration of the Queen Regent. On the contrary, he informed
them of a rumour circulated on the Continent, that a rebellion was intended in Scotland ; and
he solemnly charged those who professed the Protestant religion, to avoid all accession to it
he did not mean, he said, to retract the principle which he had advanced in former letters, as to
the lawfulness of inferior magistrates, and the body of a nation resisting the tyrannical measures
of supreme rulers ; but recourse ought not to be had to resistance, except when matters were
tyrannically driven to an extreme. — His advice and solemn charge to them was, that they should
continue to yield dutiful and cheerful obedience to all the lawful commands of the Regent, and
endeavour by humble and repeated requests, to procure her favour, and to prevail upon her, if
not to promote their cause, at least to protect it from persecution.— If, while they endeavoured
peaceably to accomplish this, attempts should be made to crush them by tyrannical violence, he
did not think that they, considering the station which they occupied, were bound to suffer their
innocent brethren to be murdered. On the contrary, it was lawful for them, nay it was their
bounden duty to stand up in their defence ; still protesting their readiness to obey the Regent in
all things consistent with their fidelity to God."— McCrie, i. 213—216. This was written in
Mary's reign, 1557 ; but we must acknowledge that he was far from being always 80 temperate.
Collier however presses too hard upon him.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 123
of Cecil's, to set the Crown of Scotland on his head to the dispossession of
Mary, and to unite the kingdoms, by obtaining for him the hand of Elizabeth :
that such projects never entered the head of this eminent Statesman we cannot
certainly pretend to say; but if it were so, they admit of an explanation not
injurious to his principles. The French had managed to place Mary in a situation
so obnoxious to the wills and wishes of a large proportion of her subjects, and
were supposed besides to have extorted from her such a reversionary claim to the
Crown of Scotland, in case of her death without children, that it became proper
for the interest both of England and Scotland, to consider the rights of the next
heirs, and to take care, that they should not be invaded by foreign usurpations.
The Hamiltons were decidedly the next in the line of inheritance, the Duke
himself had abandoned the Regent, had been slighted by her, and was not
without reason placed at the head of the Protestant party, on account of his near
relationship to the Crown; but he was too weak to be trusted as the leader of
any party,* and probably it was on this account (presuming, that is, upon the
very unfitness of the Duke for such a charge), that the Queen Dowager had
extorted from him a promise, as some write, that his son should take no part in
what was going on ; no very obscure intimation of her ill intentions towards
the house of Hamilton in regard to the succession. Arran it is true was in the
service of the French King, being Colonel of the Scottish Guards there, where
we are told he was regarded, " as an honourable hostage for the honesty of
his father."']' A strange situation to hold, if his father's rights as well as his
own were in danger from the French in his native country; especially after
Arran himself, as is generally admitted, had even in France, imbibed the
new doctrines. J The King, it seems, having summoned him to attend his
*"The feeble and vacillating disposition of the Duke of Chatelherault, of which he shewed so
many instances when Governor; had rendered him contemptible, in spite of his high rank and
relation to the Crown." — McCrie. On the 20th of August, 1559, Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir
James Croft had written to Cecil, to advise him of the importance of having the Earl of Arran in
Scotland, who should have more estimation than his father. — Sadler's Papers.
t Lingard.
t Chalmers says he was become a furious Huguenot, and of course a useful helpmate to John
Knox, for which end, that is, as he sneeringly intimates, by printing it in italics, "for the benefit
of religion," he was brought from France and sent to Scotland, under the fortunate auspices of
Mr. Secretary Cecil. — Vol.i. p. 8. We are not disposed to deny any part of this statement, we
must admit that he was even smuggled into Scotland under a feigned name by Cecil, who lent him
money out of his own purse (200 crowns), and which were very punctually repaid, but that Cecil
124 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
duty at the intended marriage of the French Princesses, his daughter and
sister, with the King of Spain and Duke of Savoy, he made excuses, and
suddenly withdrew, at the suggestion, as has been said, and with the aid of
Throckmorton, the English Ambassador. For some time his steps could not
be traced, but he was at length found at Geneva, " whence he wrote a letter, it
is also said, expressive of his gratitude to the Queen of England," with which
she was highly displeased.* The learned author, whose account we are chiefly
following, is disposed to attribute the whole scheme to Cecil and Throckmorton,
and to believe, upon the authority of Persons, Cecil's great calumniator, that
the Queen's displeasure arose, from the Secretary's having secretly encouraged
Arran, in case of success, to expect her hand, whereby the two. kingdoms might
become one, which was alleged to be his constant aim.
We need not, as we conceive, deny so much as one of these facts, though we
feel ourselves by no means bound to adopt the same conclusions with regard to
them. That Arran abruptly quitted his command seems true ; but instead of
seeking a passage either to England or Scotland, it seems equally true that
he made his way to Geneva, probably because he had " imbibed the new
doctrines ;" another admitted fact. Geneva was the focus, not only of Swiss but
of French protestantism ; Religion therefore so far seems to have been his ruling
motive. Robertson says, it was intended to charge Arran with heresy ; but of
this fact the learned author seems to entertain some doubt, he says Robertson
took it from De Thou; an author who appears to have known pretty well, what
was really passing amongst the Guises. But Throckmorton it seems, in his
letters to Cecil, never mentions the cause of his desertion, nor contradicts the
rumours of his own concern in his flight. If the cause of his desertion were
well known to his correspondent, there was no need to dwell upon it, or even
mention it, and as to his own concern with Arran, Throckmorton's notice of the
rumours without contradiction, rather proves to us, that he regarded them only
^ false rumours. Buchanans account is not mentioned by the learned author
was bound by any moral or political obligation not to do this, under the altered circumstances of
the case, we cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge. The father of Arran had joined the
Protestant Lords, and his son stood proscribed by France for having imbibed the new opinions,
and being obliged to fly for his life, was he not to be assisted to return to his native country, and
father's house, when the very care that had been taken by the French and the Regent, to keep
him out of Scotland, betrayed their purposes, and artful designs against that country.
* Lingard.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 125
in his notes upon this passage of the Earl of Arran's life, we shall therefore
transcribe it. " The cause of the Earl of Arran's return was this ; he was more
eager and zealous in the cause of Reformation than was safe for him in those
times, and therefore he was designed to be put to death by the Guises, who
were the favourites of Francis the younger (the Dauphin), for the terror of the
inferior orders of men : nay the Cardinal of Lorrain was so bold in a speech,
which he made in the Parliament of Paris, inveighing against the cause of
Reformation, that he said, they should shortly see some eminent man suffer upon
that account, who was little inferior to a Prince ; he (Arran) being made ac-
quainted therewith, and withal calling to mind, that he had a little before been
free in his discourse with the Duke of Guise upon that head, by the advice of
his friends provided for his safety by a secret flight ; and contrary to all men's
expectations came home in the midst of his country's tumults."
We imagine then the case to be this ; that this young man had incautiously
exposed himself to the resentment of the Guises by too freely discovering his
attachment to the reformed doctrines ; thereby afford ing them but too fair a ground
secretly to meditate his ruin, as being so near an heir to the Scottish throne, while
in France they could pursue him as a heretic. That the Cardinal of Lorrain
inadvertently by his speech in Parliament let him into the secret of his danger ;
upon which he fled to the nearest seat of Protestantism, Geneva ; that there
Throckmorton found him out,* and possibly upon the suggestions of Cecil,
* Dr. Lingard by way of keeping up the impression of Throckmorton's being the instigator,
under Cecil, of all that took place, says he was either accompanied or followed to Geneva by
Throckmorton's agents. We question the accompaniment. From a letter preserved in Sadler's
State Papers, from Cecil to the Duke of Chatelherault, August 1559, in which he acknowledges
having received the Duke's thanks for the good will he had shewn to his son (Arran), we
should be led to conclude with the editor of the letter, as expressed in a note, i. 404, that, " the
aforesaid Earl of Arran, being driven to take refuge in England, it would seem that his father had
bespoke for him the protection of Cecil." — This is consistent with a passage also in a paper to which
Dr. Lingard refers, namely, the special memorial to Sadler ; in which the following suggestion is
offered to the Duke of Chatelherault. " Item, The Duke may pretend as good cause to arrest
Monsieur D'Oysell and som other of the French, for aunswering for his two sonnes the Erie and
Lord David, as the French have don in driving away the one, and imprisoning the other, being
neither of them his subjects, nor offenders against him." The title of this memorial is said to be
in the hand-writing of Mr. Cecil. There is certainly a good deal of the subtle policy of the
sixteenth century in it, but the objects in view are constantly the same. The danger to the
repose both of Scotland and England, from the interference of the French. The extreme impor-
tance of lodging " the governance of Scotland" in all its branches, in the hands of natives. The
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
represented to him the disturbed state of Scotland, the contempt with which his
family pretensions to the Crown appeared to be treated by the Regent ; the
importance of his presence in Scotland if it could be managed; and perhaps the
prospect might be held out to him, of eventually marrying Elizabeth, in case Mary's
death without issue should open to him a way to the throne; or her continual
absence procure him to be constituted Regent. — There is nothing unnatural in
this, though whoever knows any thing of Elizabeth's history, would understand
her coquetish resentment of any hopes held out to Arran, of a matrimonial
connexion with her, had it been really so. But in her letter cited from Forbes,
she is made to say as follows ; " It seemeth very strange that the Earl of Arran
maketh mention in his letters, that he has cause to thank us for the offers made
to hym by us ; we be in doubt what to thynk ; and do much myslike that any
such occasion should be gyven by any manner of message sent to him." In fact,
she did not like to appear herself in the business, and the Earl probably through
want of discretion, by addressing his letters immediately to her, induced her to
cast the odium of the negotiation from herself upon her minister. Persons makes
out that the letter implied an offer of her hand to Arran, and Lingard inclines
to follow him. Surely whatever might have been suggested by Cecil, of such
future prospects, as arising out of the aspect of affairs in Scotland, he was much
too wise to make direct offers of the Queen's hand to Arran, as proceeding from
herself; he must have been not merely unwise, but the weakest of men to have
done so. Perhaps Arran may have stumbled upon the word offers, in his letters
of thanks for the notice taken of him, and assistance proffered him, and raised in
the Queen's mind a reasonable resentment of so imprudent an expression ; but
Cecil, from his own confession, had enough to do to manage the Scots, in nego-
tiations of any hazard or secresy ; " of all others," he writes to Sadler, " these
Scottes be the oppenest men that be," that is, the most incautious, even where
risk incurred by the next heirs to the Crown, of having their rights intercepted or crushed, and
the possibility of the young Queen's dying without issue. The spelling of this memorial differs
considerably from what appears in most of Cecil's own papers, yet he was undoubtedly well
acquainted with its contents, and nothing certainly could be less reduced to fixed rules, than
orthography, at this time ; an instance is given in Zouch's Life of Sir Philip Sydney, of the same
word in one particular MS. being spelled in no fewer than five and twenty different ways.
Dr. Cook, whose account of the whole proceeding seems very correct, says, that at Geneva
Arran found Randolph, and with him returned to England. Randolph might very likely be sent
there to meet him ; he was the very man likely to be so employed ; but it was very reasonable so
to employ him, considering the artifices and designs of the French.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 127
their own interest was concerned. Randolph gives the same account of them,
" I maye be bolde to lett your honors knowe that they are too open in all their
dooyngs." — Sadler, ii. 516. This does them no greater discredit, than that of
being very bad politicians for the age in which they lived. " To be plain with
you," says Sadler or Croft, in one of their letters to Knox, " ye are so open in
your doings, as you make men half affrayed to deale with you, which is more
than wisedom and polycie doth require." Knox was incautious in writing as
well as acting, according to the remark in one of the Secretary's letters to Sadler
and Croft, already quoted. " Suerly I lyke not Knoxces audacite, which also
was well taymed in your answer ; his writings doo no good here, and therefore I
doo rather suppress them, and yet I mean not but that you should contynue in
sending them."
Many instances indeed occur of their betraying themselves, by a common
want of prudence in regard to the enemy, who was viligant enough to take every
advantage, of that nature ; and more expert at practising deception, of which we
have some intimation in the very letter in which Cecil complains as above of
the carelessness of the Scots. " At this present," he writes to Sadler from the
Court, November 25, 1559, "Monsieur Ruby* is here, and hathe spoken with
the Queue's Majesty this daye, his errand I thynk be to go to France, and by
the way here to expostulate upon certain greefes in that Quene's name. He
telleth many tales and wold very fayne have the Quene's Majestye believe
that he sayth truth — -well the Quene's Majestic hath answered them as was
mete; that their tales have many parts, and require proves, which if they bryng,
hir Majestic will give order to punishe this falte in any subject that
she hath."
We may see from this, and many other circumstances, how much deception
was attempted to be practised against England. The question as it regards
Elizabeth's ministers is, could she or her kingdom have been defended
effectually without some dissimulation on their part ? Nothing can be said
in excuse of such conduct, considered abstractedly ; but the whole system of
European politics in the sixteenth century, seems generally admitted to have
been a system of stratagem against stratagem ; the least suspicious, and the
most blindly confident, were sure to suffer.-]"
* On the part of the Queen Dowager of Scotland.
t It would be difficult to conceive a more perplexing case than the one in agitation at this
time. France notoriously preparing an augmentation of forces in Scotland, to reduce the
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
It will have been seen that it was early in January, according to Lord Burghley's
notes, that " Lyddyngton was at Westminster to be conferred withall for Scottish
matters." On the 18th of February, he returned to Scotland ;* and on the 27th
of that month, as we have before shewn, her Majesty's Commissioners at
Berwick agreed to act hostilely against the French, if necessary, in aid of
the Congregation.
In the mean while measures were taking at the Court, to procure the
revocation of both armies ; the English army under Norfolk, as well as the
French army from Scotland. On March the 2d, three days only after the
accord made between the English and Scotch Commissioners, we find the
following entry among Lord Rnrghley's notes.
" March 2. A Treaty with Du Cevre for the manner of the revocation of
I
Protestants to submission; but as long as they were not dismissed, or if dismissed, as long as
they could ostensibly pretend, that they were only sent to subdue rebels, there was no breach of
treaty with England on the French side; while England could not but feel that the Scots
insurgents were all on her side, in regard both to religion and the keeping the French out of
Scotland, whence England might be invaded, though it was better to prevent it by upholding
the Scots Protestants, and enabling tttem to expel the French, than by provoking a decided war
by a premature breach of treaty on her part. — -See Cecil's Letter, Sadler, ii. 567, &c. a curious
document.
* On occasion of his return, the Secretary \_Cecil} wrote thus to Sir Ralph Sadler at Berwick :
" Good Mr. Sadler, you have known this berer the Lord of Leddyngton, but I here have had great
proofe of hym, to be both wise, honest, and constant. I pray you, lett hym receive your frendly
entertainment, with some addition for my sake. God send us a good end of your ministerial
labours. He can shew you howe lowe the Frenchmen flye, yet can stowpe now to any English-
man's whystell. Tyme serveth all tomes, and loss of tyme loseth all good things. From West-
minster, the 18th of February, 1559. Yours, as ye knowe assuredly, W. Cecill."
In another letter, March 22, we find the following passage : " Well, how so ever the matter is,
good courage in a good quarrel, as this is, to delyver a rcalme from conqueste, and consequently
to save our own, will much furder the matter." These should be considered as the real objects of
the Secretary's policy, and as far as regarded the conquest of Scotland, the object of the Con-
gregation, as in their address to the Lords of Scotland, March 27, 1560, [Sadler's Letttn,
No. ccxxxii.] they express themselves, speaking of the " manifest conquest which the French
intended to make of their native realms, conquyert and defended by the blood of their pro-
genitors," and calling upon them as " kynd and true ScottL=men to join in stopping them of
their pretence," and to " assist in expelling the saide strangers," at the hazard of being
otherwise reputed plain enemies to the common weal of their native country and " assistors
to the said Frenchmen in conquesting thereof." The fortifying of Leith by the Regent, was the
first proofe alleged by the Reformers of the design to make a conquest of Scotland.— Cook, ii. 187.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 129
the English army and the French also out of Scotland, but Du Cevre delayeth."
On the 9th, as appears from Haynes, 258, (a minute of Secretary Cecil)
the Queen wrote to the Duke of Norfolk, to apprise him that she had
received a message from the French King, offering to reform all that was
amiss, to make an accord with England, and leave Scotland free from danger
of conquest.. That in consequence of this, the Queen had given them to
the 28th, to withdraw their troops, and " come to a reasonable accord,"
but if this should prove to be only an effort to gain time, the entry was
to be made on the 28th. On the 12th of the same month we find the following
entry : " March 12. Bishop of Valence come into England." On the 24th
again we have another entry : " A Proclamation by her Majesty to declare
hir mind to keep peace .both with France and Scotland, notwithstanding
the occasions given by the French King and his wife, the Queen of Scotts,
in claiming the Title .to the Crowne."
These three entries throw a light upon the subject, little noticed by
historians. They tend to shew that whatever secret negotiations and com-
munications were going on with the Congregationists, the army was not
allowed to act, without a public statement being made, of the grievances
England was anxious to have redressed, by Du Sevre and Monluc Bishop of
Valence ; who appear to have been in London on the 24th ; and in whom the
French had two ministers and negotiators upon the spot, to be exceeded by none,
according to all accounts, in subtlety and state craft ; and indeed Elizabeth
appears at first to have been no match for them.
On the 28th, however, according to Lord Burghley, " the army entered
by land, with the Lord Grey, into Scotland ;" hurried thither, no doubt, by a
movement of the Regent, to surprise the castle of Glasgow, and disperse the
troops under the command of the Duke of Chatelherault ; they succeeded in
reducing the Episcopal palace, but were called away by the entrance of the
English army into Scotland.
On the 4th of April the Lords of the Congregation forwarded to the Queen
Regent an address from Dalkeith, which deserves to be transcribed.* It was
• The Lords of Scotland at this time confederate against the French, were as follow, accord-
ing to Holinsfied ; '.' the Duke of Chatelherault, the Earl of Arran his son, the Lord James
Prior of St. Andrews, the Earl of Argyle, the Earl of Glencairn, the Earl of Rothouse, the Earl
of Sutherland, the Earl of Monteith, the Earl of Huntley, the Earl of Caithness, the Earl of
Errol, the Earl Marshall, the Karl of Morton, the Earl of Cassilis, the Earl of Eglinton, the Earl
of Montrose, the Lord Ruthen, the Lord Boyd, the Lord Ogletree, the Lord Erskin, the Lord
VOL. II. S
130 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
sent to her in the castle of Edinburgh, to which she had retired for safety, and
it is the more to be attended to, since it seems to have been dismissed from the
midst of the English army, which the Reformers had joined on the 1st of April ;
we copy it from Buchanan.
" We have oftentimes heretofore earnestly intreated you, both by letters and
messengers, to send away the French soldiers, who do yet another year
grievously oppress the poor country people ; nay, they excite a just fear in the
commonalty, that they shall be reduced into a miserable servitude ; from which
fear we have many times intreated you to deliver us; but when our just
intreaties prevailed nothing with you, we were enforced to represent our
deplorable estate to the Queen of England, as the nearest Princess to us, and to
desire aid of her to drive foreigners who threatened to make us slaves, out of
our kingdom ; and that by force of arms, if it could not otherwise be done.
And though she, out of a sense of our calamities, hath undertaken our cause,
yet, that we might perform our duty to the mother of our Queen, and might
prevent the effusion of Christian blood as much as is possible, and might then
have recourse to force of arms, when we have tried all other ways to obtain
right without success, we do as yet esteem it a part of that good temper which
we ought to keep, again to pray you to command the French soldiers, with their
commander and officers, to depart immediately out of the land. In order to
the accomplishment whereof, the Queen of England will not only afford them a
safe passage through her kingdom, but will also assist with her fleet to transport
them. If this condition be rejected, we call God and Man to witness, that we
take up arms, not out of hatred, or any wicked intent, but enforced thereto by
mere necessity, that so we may try the extremity of remedies, that the common-
wealth, ourselves, our estates and posterity, might not be precipitated into utter
ruin. And yet, notwithstanding, though we at present suffer very heavy pres-
sures, and more heavy ones are near approaching, no danger whatsoever shall
ever enforce us to depart from our duty towards our Queen, or from the King
her Husband, in the least tittle, wherein the destruction of our ancient liberty,
and the ruin of ourselves and our posterity, is not concerned. As for you, most
excellent Princess, we beseech you again, that weighing the equity of our
demands, the inconveniences attending war, and how necessary peace is to this
Drummond.the Lord Hume, the Lord Roose, the Lord Creighton, the Lord Levingston, the Lord
Somerville, the Master of Lindsey, and the Master of Maxwell." The list of those who concurred
in the act of suspension may be seen in Cook's History of the Reformation, vol. ii. 201.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 131
your Daughter's Kingdom, so miserably harassed, you would afford a favourable
ear to our just request : which if you shall do, you will leave a grateful and
pleasing remembrance of your moderation among all nations, and will also
consult the tranquillity of the greatest part of Christendom. Dated at Dalkeith,
the 4th of April, in the year 1560."
We shall be told that the loyalty exhibited and professed in this address,
could not be sincere, because there were two aspirants to the throne among the
Lords of the Congregation, Arran and the Prior of St. Andrews. The Regent,
indeed, had been careful to excite these suspicions with regard to both ; but if
both were aspirants, they must have been rather in opposition to each other,
than so closely confederated, as at this time appears to have been the case; for
on the retreat of the Reformists from Edinburgh, after their failure before Leith,
Lord Arran and the Prior stayed behind together, and were anxious not to
abandon the cause in the way the others seemed to do. In Sadler's State Papers
there are besides several letters signed by these two lords in particular, under
every appearance of cordiality, and what is more, of a deference on the part of
Lord James to Arran's higher legitimate rank — thus, James Hamilton, James
Stewart; or, as it often is, Therle of Arrayn, and the Lord James. Throck-
morton and Cecil are indeed continually accused of intending to place Arran on
the throne ; but it should be considered, before we blame (rather before we
execrate, as some authors pretend to do) such projects and designs, in what state
the Sovereign really was. In the hands of the French, she was Queen by
courtesy, rather than in reality. If the French designs should not be completely
frustrated, and the Queen still remain alienated, as it were, from her native
country and kingdom, it might become a question whether such absence, at the
risk of her subjects being made to surrender the ancient rights and liberties of
Scottish men, might not amount to abdication ; and in such case, the house of
Hamilton undoubtedly had the best claim to the crown. We certainly cannot
praise or commend the terms in which Throckmorton decides upon such a revo-
lution in some of his letters to Cecil, but we can forgive the feeling with which
they contemplated such an issue of things, as the best security that could be
offered to England. We can, in short, forgive the strong assurance they must
have entertained, that nothing could be more entirely adverse to the peace of
both kingdoms, than Mary's close connexion with England's perpetual enemies,
and more particularly with that very family whose determination to resist the
progre&s of the Reformation, and extirpate heretics, was known all the world over.
132 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
"The best worldly felicity," says Cecil, in his famous Memorial, "that
Scotland can have, is either to continue in a perpetual peace with the kingdom
of England, or to be made one monarchy with England, &c. — When Scotland
shall come into the hands of a mere Scottish man in blood, then may there be
hope of such accord ; but as long as it is at the commandment of the French,
there is no hope to have accord long betwixt these two realms."*
Mary, or rather her relatives, we may be assured, would have dispossessed
Elizabeth, and made one monarchy of the island at once, had not Cecil by his
wisdom and foresight interposed ; but the latter could not be said, to be grasping
at so much for Elizabeth, while he allowed, that if the kingdom of Scotland were
" in the hands of a mere Scottish man of blood," the accord he wished for
might be sufficiently secured. We may ask, had Mary of England been con-
veyed to Spain, when she was married to Philip II., and entirely surrendered
the government of her native country to Philip and his emissaries, and by the
gift of the Crown Matrimonial and other secret acts, made over the reversion of
her throne to strangers, should we as Englishmen have thought it unreasonable
to look to the next heir, or heirs', for protection and security against foreign
influence, and what was worse, foreign dominion ? Cecil had had these chances
before his eyes ; he had already had one heir presumptive under his protection,
and no wonder that he should look a little to the interests of another, when the
salvation of his own country might be at stake.-]" Had Mary lived abroad for
• In a letter from Sir Ralph Sadler to Cecil, March 31, 1560, asking for more money for the
Congregation, he says, " What is xx M". (20,OOOZ.) more or less in a Pryncis purse, specially
to be employed where such an advantage may be taken as is now likely to be had in this case,
whereby in my poure opynyon, it must neds folowe, either that these ij [two] realmes shall be
conjoytied in perpetuall unytie, or at the leste, to brede such an enemytie between the French
and the Scotts, as the French shall never have oportunytie greatly to annoy us by the way of
Scotland, which hath ever been the only way whereby they could do us much annoyance; but I
uede not tell this to you, who knoweth better than I what is most like to folowe of this matter."
He presses the supply the more earnestly for fear the Lords of Scotland, " being now our friends,
becom our enemies, and joine with the French against us, as they have don in tymes past."— State
Papers, i. 716.
t In Sadler's State Papers, i. 404, in a letter to the Duke of Chatelherault, the Secretary
writes, " But I will not molest your Grace ; this one thing I covet, to have this isle well united
in concord, and then could I be content to leave my lief and the joye thereof to posterite."—
But there is another passage we must bring forward, more applicable to what occurs in the
text, and of which we were not aware when we first, threw out the remark ; it is contained in a
special memorial for Sir Ralph Sadler himself. " Item, To procure that the Duke (of Chatel-
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 133
many years, without children, as Queen of France, what good prospect was
there during the two first years of Elizabeth's reign, for the house of Hamilton,
the liberties of Scotland, or the independence of England ? * It must have been
upon these contingencies that Cecil acted ; considering the British interests at
stake, to speak by anticipation of both countries jointly. Arran had better
have been made King of Scotland, and even Elizabeth united to him by
marriage, than that the Queen of Scotland should have remained in France
entirely under the control of her bigoted family. It is idle to talk of an in-
veterate enmity against a young woman of Mary's age ; we must look for the
cause of her calamities constantly to the bigotry of her relations, and their
incessant enmity to Elizabeth and England. We are quite willing to confess
herault) may for preservation of the expectant interest which he hath to ye croune, yf God
call the yong Quene before she have issue, instantly withstand the governance of that realme,
by any other than by the blud of Skotland, like as the King of Spayne being husband to the
Quene of Ingland, committed no charge of any manner of office spirituall or temporal!, to any
stranger, neither dothe he otherwise, nor his father before him in his countries of Flanders,
Brabant, or any other, but suffereth them to be governed holy by their owne nation. In this point
yf the Duke meane to preserve his title, ought he to l>e earnest, for otherwise he may be assured,
that the French, under pretense of subduing of religion, will also subdue the realme, and ex-
tirpe his house."
* In Holinshed the motives for Elizabeth's interference are well enough set forth. — "The
Queenes Majestic, with advice of her Graces councell, considering of this weightic btisinesse, and
withall foreseeing the malicious purpose of her adversaries, and howe the Queene of Scots was in
France, married and governed, so as she was not able to use the libertie of her Crowne, did
thinke it best to prevent such mischiefs as might insue, if timely remedie were not used, to dis-
place such dangerous neighbours the Frenchmen, that began to nestle themselves thus stronglie
so near at hand, for no good purpose as easilie might be guessed."
In Cecil's celebrated letter to Lord Huntly, March 18, 1559-60, in Haynes, written to induce
him to join the party of the Congregation, his story is constantly the same. " Precede now, my
Lord, I say, to the savety of your country, preserve your owne ancient house, remember there is
no thyrd thing to choose, but either to suffer the insolency of France, or to be preserved with a
natural! governance; surely whosoever shall speke of a third, that is of a favourable governance
by Frenchmen, yea though they be never so few, he either is ignorant or meaneth depe deceyte.
No governance shall so accord with Scotland, but a lawfull governance of naturall people, for my
part, I assure you, my Lord, that whatsoever it shall please God to offer to the concord of these two
realmes, being at the creation knitt in one isle, and with one language, and one sort of people,
having no difference but name, I will employe my endevor to the performance therin, of God's
favour and good will." This is so similar to the papers of the Duke of Somerset, at the beginning
of Edward's reign, noticed in our first volume, as to leave but little room to doubt that Cecil (as
we there intimated) had a chief hand in the earliest negotiations of this description.
134 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGH LEY. [1560.
that we never saw these things exactly in the light we now do, till we were led
to examine into the policy of Lord Burghley, with more exactness than perhaps
has ever before been applied to the subject ; but we feel bound to state the
result of such researches. It is our full belief, that nothing could have saved
either Scotland or England, from the grasp of the Catholic continental powers,
in the sixteenth century, but the wisdom of Cecil, the fortitude of Elizabeth,
and their joint discreet choice, of other most able ministers and negotiators.
But we must return to the military operations that were going on in Scotland.
The Lords received no favourable answer to their last address. Lord Grey,
Warden of the East and Middle Marches, had entered with the English army,
under the directions of the Duke of Norfolk, as Lieutenant-general of the
Queen's forces in'the North, and for the purpose of watching every opportunity
of rendering assistance to the party opposed to the French, without exciting the
jealousy of the Scots* The latter were to be left still to fight their own battles,
as long as any prospect should appear of their being able to settle matters, or
expel the French by their own strength ; and most extreme caution appears to
have been used, to prevent the Scots harbouring any other thoughts of Elizabeth's
interference, than that she was anxious to preserve Scotland in obedience to its
* It was extremely difficult in this case, as upon former occasions, to assist the Scots, without
hazard of their taking a wrong view of the designs of England. In no instance had England any
enmity towards Scotland, if it could but be separated from its fatal connexion with France. Sir
Ralph Sadler, writing of the difficulties of providing in Scotland for the forage of the horses of the
English army, says, " So we doubt how it shall be possible to provide for the feeding of so many
horses in Scotland at this time of year, which is to be well considered ; for when this power shall
enter into Scotland, they must think themselves to be in their friends country, where no spoil is to be
made, but must take that they can get for their money, whereby to entertain the love of the people
in such sort, as they may perceive us to come for their good, and not for their evil." — State
Papers, i. 652. But of the good intentions of England towards Scotland at this time, we cannot
well doubt, after the testimony of so able a man as the younger Maitland of Lethington, the
agent of the Congregation at the English Court; on the llth of January, 1559-60, he writes
thus to Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir James Croft, from London : " I have, by divers zour lettres,
communicated unto me by Mr. Secretary (Cecil), weill onderstand zour ernest good will and
greate labours to the furtherance off the cause I have in hand, quharby my sute has not
been a little advansit. If I should thank zow, it wer too bare a recompense, seing the
uttermost I am abill to do is not sufficient to contervale the least part of zour frendships.
Ze have enterit my haill nation in obligation unto zou ; and I hope it shall prove at length ze
have also weill deservit off zour awin countrey. Ze will onderstand more by Mr. Secretary's
writing, nor I myself am zit privy to, although I be in gude hope — Zours at commandement,
"W. MAITLAND."
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 135
Queen, and the freedom of the country (it might have been, said of both kingdoms)
from the designs of the French.
It appears indeed from the correspondence of the Duke of Norfolk with the
Secretary at this time, that the greatest care was taken not to commit Elizabeth,
by any over-eagerness to take part in the expulsion of the French, for fear, by
giving umbrage to the Scots, she might even make enemies of friends, and
in the end minister to the very purposes of the French.* The case was certainly
an extremely delicate one, and seems to have been managed with consummate
policy, prudence, and deliberation.
The fleet, under Admiral Winter, was undoubtedly sent thither with a view
to prevent the entrance into Scotland of any fresh reinforcements of French
troops ;t but professedly, according to the Queen's declarations and instructions,
rather to preserve peace than to break the same :J of the truth and sincerity
of which there can be little doubt, England being so unprepared for war, and
the Queen exceedingly loath to part with her money. Dr. Lingard, an author
whom we must excuse for seeing many things in a different light from ourselves,
in any contest between Protestants and Catholics, seems to regard the proceedings
of Elizabeth and her Council as one continued scene of duplicity ; speaking of
the remonstrances of Noailles, the French Ambassador, against the warlike
preparations on foot [Dec. 20.], " Elizabeth," he says, " assured him of her
determination to maintain the peace of Cateau : and as a proof of her sincerity,
wished that the curse of Heaven might light on the head of that Prince, who
*" The caution of Queen Elizabeth and her Ministers, and their experience of the fluctuating
councils of the Scottish Nobles, led them to demand hostages before the march of their auxiliary
army into Scotland." — Clifford, Sadler, i. 662, note.
f " The French preparations be so great, as we se not how they may be withstand when they
be at the full, except they be impeched in the beginning, the first meane therein is to obteyne the
Fryth into our possession for the stay of any greater succour." — Cecil to Sir R. Sadler, De'c.
16, 1559. On the 19th Sir Ralph writes to Cecil, " If ye mind there (at court) to folow these
matters here agenst the French with such effect as now it semeth to me ye intend, wherein I wold
to God ye had been more forward in time ; for God's sake put to your helping hand." Can any
thing more fully express the danger to be apprehended from the French preparations and proceed-
ings, than what is said, in a letter of Cecil to Sadler and Croft, Dec. 23, 1559, " The whole coasts
of France prepare to war ; and therefore it is full time that we see to our parts. God give you both
good nights, for I am almost asleep. At Westminster, hora 12" nocte, 23 Dec. W. CECIL."
J " The French are yet presently in Sterling, so that there is neither suretie nor leisure of pre-
parations so long as your shipps are not arrived, which would put rest to all." — Letter from the
Earl of Arran and Lord James to Sir R. Sadler and Sir James Croft, January 4, 1559-60.
136 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560,
should be the first to violate it." We do not think there was any insincerity in
this, according to what the sanfe learned author reports even of the answer of
the Council : " Tlie Council," he writes, "replied that Francis and Mary, by
assuming the style and arms of England, had furnished ample ground for appre-
hension; and that while the French Monarch continued to recruit his forces
both at home and in Scotland, they should be wanting in their duty, if they did
not advise the Queen to prepare for the defence of her own dominions. Noailles,
however, was not deceived ; he denounced the hostile intention of the English
cabinet to his Sovereign, and to the Queen Regent of Scotland."1 Duplicity
there certainly was ; but not any general insincerity as to the views of the
English Court and Council. Francis and Mary had, since the conclusion of the
peace, repeated the offence of using the English arms and title. Letters had
been intercepted, which threw much light on the designs of the French, in a
correspondence carried on through the French Ambassador himself; the treaty
had begun to be infringed by the French ; and there can be little doubt but
that the preparations in the French ports, whence a fleet was hourly expected to
* Noailles remonstrated, it seems, on the 20ih of December. Now we happen to know, that
on the 9th of that very month Sadler and Croft had given intimation to the Secretary, that the
French troops were taking possession of Aymouth, with inten ion to fortify it: the fortifications
of which very place they had stipulated to raze in three months after the conclusion of the peace.
The Queen therefore in her reply to their dispatch, dated December 13, had good reason to say,
that this was " so directly both against the treaty, and the surete of our town of Berwicke, that
although we have hitherto borne with divers misorders of the French, yet can we not forbeare to
impeche this violation of the peace." But Cecil's own letter is more particular, of the same date
as the Queen's, " This tyme tarrieth not as ye see ; this daye your advertisement of the matter
of Aymouth maketh us slyrr. The truth is, we here ment before, that my Lord of Norfolk should
be at Newcastle before the end of this month. Our shipps being xu men of war, well appoynted,
with vni or x victellers, and vm others with munition, &c.; were appointed to depart by the
xx th hereof, [the very day chosen by Noailles to make his complaint,] and now this day (viz. the
xiiith.) we understand that 40 sayles be past from France with men and victell. So as ovrs be
lyke to come too late, and yet they shall away. The matter is too weighty to be trifled, and so
we all now, at the last doo judge. Wherein I wold to God some had been of some more speedye
foresight. You shall perceive by the Q.'s Majesties letter, that because it is a violation of the
treaty to fortify Aymouth, ye may be the bolder to be doing with the French. If ye see that they
doo not fortify, then are they to be forborn until the matter may be more earnestly followed ; for
else it were dangerous to begin the matter, and not to follow it with effect ; and so on the other
syde, if their fortifying shall seme a matter of difficulte for us hereafter to expell them, it were
better to begin in tyme with them."— Sadler's State Papers, i. 634, 5.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 137
sail under the command of the Marquis d'Elbceuf (a Guise, and brother of the
Regent, designed indeed to take her place), were as much directed against
England as against Scotland ; in fact, they were larger than the case required,
if designed only to suppress a Scottish faction, as the French pretended. It
was under a hope of bringing on an accommodation, before the arrival of this
formidable armament, that the English army and fleet were employed, and
certainly rather to preserve peace than break the same, if they should not be too
late, a design which ultimately was fully accomplished, as we shall have to shew.
Things hung a good while in suspense, and in no small degree from the
tardiness, or rather wariness, of the English ; which kept the Scotch neutrals
from declaring themselves, [see letter to Sadler from Lord Arran and Lord James,
Dec. 20.] and which was felt by the English officers, and complained of in
letters to the Secretary, who seemed himself to think the Queen too cautious,
and too dilatory in striking a blow which might bring things to an earlier
accommodation ; in fact, if we may believe what some authors assert, the Duke
of Guise and Cardinal of Lorrain were employing every art of political intrigue
to prevent Elizabeth giving assistance to the Scottish Congregation, and to
prevail upon her to desert them, after she had undertaken their protection ; nor
were they altogether unsuccessful in their attempt ; for the English Queen,
partly from her extreme caution and parsimony, and partly from the influence of
some of her counsellors, was induced at first to listen to their plausible proposals ;
she delayed the march of her army into Scotland, and even after they had
undertaken the siege of Leith, she suspended the military operations, and
engaged in premature negotiations for peace.* There can be no doubt, indeed,
but that the Queen's object was peace rather than war, unless provoked by the
French, which she expected might be the case, as appears not only from the
* McCrie'sLife of Knox, i. 319, and his Note II. p. 441, 2, which deserves attention, as plainly
shewing the difficulties that arose from Elizabeth's repugnance to the undertaking. The coin-
plaint of Cecil, in his correspondence with Throckmorton, is curiously expressed : " The Queen's
Majestie," says he, " never liketh this matter of Scotland ; you know what hangef/i thereupon ;
I have had such a torment herein with the Queen's Majestie, as an ague hath not in five fits so
much abated." — Forbes, i. 454, 5. The council was much divided. " At this time," Cecil
writes to Sadler, Dec. 30, 1559, "here is some contrairietie of opinion amongst counsellors: of
all the peril is seen that will come by the French greatness in Scotland ; but the remedy thereof is
not accorded upon by all ; some like a speedy and effectual empechment, whereof the greatest
part of the counsellors do allowe — some others, very few, would have us more ready with other
things, and to defer hostilitie."
VOL. II. T
138 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
proceedings at Aymouth, but from a passage in one of her dispatches to the
Duke of Norfolk, wherein she wishes to have no open hostility shewed on her
part at the first : " which although the French doo give us just occasion to shew,
yet be there certain respects that move us to forbear the same for one or two
months if it may conveniently be." In this she was probably more influenced
by the Catholic and Guisian members of her Council than by Cecil. We do
not deny that we read with concern the shuffling excuses and pretences with
which the hostile movements of the army and navy were attempted to be
coloured over;* but to collect them altogether so sedulously as some authors
have done, in order to bring upon the heads of Lord Burghley, Throckmorton,
and others, the undivided charge of duplicity and political intrigue, is in our
estimation extremely unfair. Whoever knows any thing of history, must know
how continually rival nations, prepared to break a treaty, seek to colour over their
designs, till the moment for action arrives ; that whenever the treaty comes to be
actually violated, the adversary, and not themselves, may be made to bear the
* Dr. Lingard, whose history we more particularly cite in consequence of the credit given to it (at
least by those of his own way of thinking), adduces a particular passage from Cecil's memorial to the
King of Spain, as a direct proof not only of his deceit, but of his falsehood. We shall repeat the
passage, as we think it may be cleared of the foul imputation cast upon it : " Ut verum fateamur,
(omnesquequi hie sunt norunt esse verissimum) nos diu dubitatione aliqua esse occupatos, an heec
discordia in Scotia inter Gallos et Scotos esset/cta, ut sub eo colors haberant in armis justum exer-
citum, etjunctis utrinque copiis irrumperent subito in hoc regnum et prsccipue caperent Berwicum."
Now, besides that it appears from other papers, that many of the English were quite unwilling to
trust the Lords of the Congregation, suspecting the very treachery Cecil alludes to, we have it
on the authority of Camden, that the French commander, d'Oysel, had assembled the Scotch
nobles at Eymouth (Aymouth), and proposed to them (during the heat of their own civil dissen-
sions) the immediate invasion and conquest of England ! The garrison of Eymouth had always
been troublesome neighbours to Berwick, from whence it was distant only six miles; indeed the
caution of the English Court, against treachery on the part of the Lords of the Congregation, is
proved by their taking hostages before the march of the auxiliary army into Scotland. This alone
is enough to justify the Secretary's expression, " Nos diu dubitatione aliqua esse occupatos, an
hsec discordia inter Gallos et Scotos essetjicta, &c."— The very endeavours made to keep them at
variance, and with which many writers are so much offended, tend at least to shew, that appre-
hensions constantly existed, of the Protestant Lords being almost equally inimical to England, if
once they should be beguiled by the French into any union against that kingdom ; and of the
versatility of the Scotch parties at that period, we have a curious instance in Lodge-Lord
Glencairn and his son, it seems, in Henry's time, in the month of April, 1543 or 1544, embraced
the English interests, in July took pensions from Henry, in September abandoned him, and in
the ensuing spring offered their services to him again.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. ]39
blame. Cecil's precautions concerning Aymouth were certainly called for by the
proceedings of the French, yet we may see by a postscript added, how much he
wished to conform to the treaty if it were possible. Had not a storm prevented
the fleet and forces, under the Marquis d'Elbceuf,* reaching Scotland before
Admiral Winter entered the Frith, we must be very credulous indeed to believe
that any peace of Chateau would have protected either the Protestants there, or
(perhaps) England itself. If we knew all that was passing in France at the time, as
well as we know what passed in England (through the care of no man so much
as Lord Burghley, in his extraordinary preservation of public papers), we should
scarcely fail, we think, to discover quite as much duplicity and political intrigue
on the side of the French as of the English ; the Gallica fides having generally
been as loudly stigmatized by modern diplomatists and statesmen, as ever the
Punica fides could be by the ancients. f
To shew that something of this nature was going on, on the other side, though
our own Ministers are commonly the most censured, because they were the least
deceived, by being constantly on their guard, we shall copy another entry from
Lord Burghley 's notes, just after the entrance of the English army into Scotland.
" April. Bishop of Valence and De Cevre , leger ambassadors from France,
moved the Queen to revoq her army.
" 10. M. de Glason came and joined with the Bishop of Aquila to move
revocation of the army out of Scotland, but Glason, privately, to my Lord
Admiral and me the Secretary, counselled us to the contrary. "%
* In Nov. or Dec. 1559, the Marquis d'Elbceuf had actually embarked for Scotland, with a
great force, but after coming within sight of Scotland, the transports were scattered by a storm,
and either wrecked on the coast of Holland, or driven back to France ; about nine hundred men,
under M. de Mortigues, were all that reached Scotland : as to the various, and often contradictory,
accounts of these transactions, see Dr. Cook's note in his History of the Scottish Reformation,
Vol. ii. p. 243.
f When Sir Ralph Sadler acted as Minister to Henry VIII., and when both, notwithstanding
the vigilance, acuteness, and spirit of the former, were duped by the Popish party, the Queen
Dowager, &c., we meet continually in his letters with such expressions as follow : — " But what
will follow, God knoweth ; for Ithink never men had to do with such people." — " This they say,
but how it will prove God knoweth." And in a letter from Lord Wharton to Lord Shrewsbury
about the same time, viz. 1544, printed by Lodge, he writes, " I have thought good to advertise
your Lordship hereof, albeit they be all so false, that I know not well what to write or say."
Of the Queen Regent, Arran was used to observe, " as she is both subtle and wily, so she hath
a vengeable engine and wit to work her purpose."
I See in Forbes, vol. i. 402. The Responsio ad petitiones D. Glasion et Episcopi Aquilan
140 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
We have here then, not English, but foreign authority to adduce for foreign
duplicity and stratagem ; for this M. de Glason, as Lord Burghley calls him,
was the Spanish Minister who had interposed, in order to bring about an
accommodation between the French and English. On one hand he joins the
French in proposing the revocation of the English army, and on the other
counsels exactly the contrary ; not without reason, for Philip his master had
almost as much to dread from the French successes in Scotland as Elizabeth.
Throckmorton gives a high character of this M. de Glaison (as he calls him; the
most proper name seems to be de Glaioti) in a letter to the Queen, from Am-
boise, March 15, 1559. Forbes, i. 363 ; and we have as good authority to
produce for the policy of England, in trying to hinder any accommodation
between the Scots and French, while the security of England should remain
unprovided for. For the following is the remark of the French historian Daniel :
"If France and Scotland had remained in tranquillity, England was in danger
of being attacked from two quarters at once, and disturbed at home by the still
numerous adherents of the old religion." Hence may be seen, says the author
of the Life and Reign of Elizabeth, what was the design of the Princes of
Lorrain in sending a French army into Scotland. It was to preserve the peace
of that kingdom, that is, to render it entirely subject to France, in order to attack
England from that side. This must ever be remembered, if it be desired to
understand perfectly Elizabeth's history.
It is impossible, we think, to have any doubt, but that the French were seeking
Oratorum Regis Catholiei. — It is an admirable paper, Ex autograph, manu Cecillii exarato. This
Spanish Envoy was represented by the Spanish Minister at Paris, to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton,
to be a man of profound wisdom, and fully sensible of the importance of preserving peace
between the Low Countries and England. Dr. Cook's account of this answer of Cecil is too
complimentary to the latter to be omitted. " While these men, Lord Montague and Sir Thomas
Chamberlayn, were labouring to conciliate Philip, Cecil, in a most able and elegant Latin me-
morial, answered the declaration of De Glasion. In this answer the conduct of Elizabeth is
justified, her forbearance is extolled, the impracticability of a scheme which had been proposed
by De Glasion to unite some Spanish forces with the troops of France in Scotland, which might
prevent any attempt upon England after the rebels were subdued, is demonstrated, and the
real objects of the Queen for acting as she had done are explicitly avowed. This memorial
seems to have satisfied the Spanish Ambassador ; indeed, it has been suspected that he was not
averse to the schemes of Elizabeth with respect to Scotland ; his master's antipathy to France
having in some degree overcome the detestation with which he naturally regarded the Scottish
Lords, who, in his eyes, were guilty of what he esteemed the two greatest crimes which could
disgrace human nature— heresy and rebellion.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 141
to make Scotland their own. The memorable words of the Queen Regent,
reported by her own herald, to the Lords of the Congregation, were much too
significant to be misunderstood. " She wondered that any should presume to
command her in that kingdom, which needed not to be conquered by force, being
already conquered by marriage."* Most imprudent words, but fortunately such
as are calculated to throw no small light upon this embarrassed portion of history.
In further vindication of the views and proceedings of Elizabeth's great Mi-
nister, with regard to Scotland at this period, we cannot forbear transcribing the
following very important, though long passage, from Dr. McCrie's Life of Knox ;
it refers to the period of Knox's return from the Continent in 1559. We have
already shewn that he was no favourite with Elizabeth ; he endeavoured to
return through England, and she would not allow it. This angered him not a
little, as might be expected from his irritable or sanguine temper. " England has
refused me," he writes in a letter from Dieppe, April G, 1559, " and yet I have
been a secret and assured friend to thee, O England, in cases which thyself
could not have remedied." But, continues his able biographer, " greater designs
occupied his mind, and engrossed his attention. It was not for the sake of
personal safety, nor from the vanity of appearing at Court, that he desired to
pass through England ; he felt the natural wish to visit his old acquaintances
in that country, and was anxious for an opportunity of once more addressing
those to whom he had preached, especially at Newcastle and Berwick. But
there was another object which he had still more at heart, and in which the
welfare of both England and Scotland were concerned.
" Notwithstanding the flattering accounts which he had received of the favour-
able disposition of the Queen Regent towards the Protestants, and the directions
which he sent them to cultivate this, he seems to have always entertained
suspicions of the sincerity of her professions. Since he left Geneva, these
suspicions had been confirmed ; and the information which he had procured
in travelling through France conspired with intelligence which he had lately
received from Scotland to convince him, that the immediate suppression of
* It is curious to read Chalmers' comment on the course England took to avert the designs of
France at this time. " Upon what moral principle," he asks, " did Elizabeth and Cecil act? —
upon none : their principle was profligacy in the extreme." Where could be the profligacy of
preventing Scotland being conquered, either by force or marriage, to the ruin of England? — We
are thoroughly persuaded that, upon this occasion, Elizabeth, through her minister Cecil, was the
true guardian of the liberties of both countries.
,42 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
the Reformation in his native country, and the consequent suppression in the
neighbouring kingdom, were intended. The plan projected by the gigantic
ambition of the Princes of Lorrain, brothers of the Queen Regent of Scotland,
has been developed and described, with great accuracy and ability, by a cele-
brated modern historian.* Suffice it to say here, that their counsels had deter-
mined the French Court to set up the claims of the young Queen of Scots to
the Crown of England ; to attack Elizabeth, and wrest the Sceptre from her
hands, under the pretext that she was a bastard and a heretic ; and to commence
their operations by suppressing the Reformation, and establishing the French
influence in Scotland, as the best preparative to an attack upon the dominions of the
English Queen. Knox, in the course of his journeys through France, had formed
an acquaintance with certain persons about the Court, and by their means had
gained some knowledge of this plan. He was convinced the Scottish Reformers
were unable to resist the power which France might bring against them ; and
that it was no less the interest than the duty of the English Court to afford them
the most effectual support. But he was afraid that a selfish and narrow policy
might prevent them from doing this, until it was too late ; and was therefore
anxious to call their attention to this subject at an early period, and to put them
in possession of the facts that had come to his knowledge.
" The assistance which Elizabeth granted to the Scottish Protestants, in the
year 1560, was dictated by the soundest policy. It baffled and defeated the
designs of her enemies at the very outset ; it gave her influence over Scotland,
which all her predecessors could not obtain by the terror of their arms, nor the
influence of their money ; and it secured the stability of her government, by
extending and strengthening the Protestant interest — the principal pillar on
which it rested. And it reflects not a little credit on our Reformer's sagacity,
that he had conceived this plan at so early a period, was the first person who
proposed it, and persisted, in spite of great discouragements, to urge its adoption,
until his endeavours were ultimately crowned with success."
Deeply impressed, it seems, with these considerations, Knox. resolved, although
he had already been twice repulsed, to brook the mortification, and make another
attempt to obtain an interview with some confidential agent of the English Govern-
ment. With this view, he, on the 10th of April, wrote a letter to Secretary Cecil,
with whom he had been personally acquainted, during his residence in London.
* Robertson.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 143
We need not give the letter at large ; it is sufficient to observe, that this latter
attempt failed, as well as the former; and in fact, Cecil must have known, that the
English Court was no place for Knox to appear in. Besides the displeasure of
Elizabeth, there were too many Catholics in the Council, and about the Court,
to allow of his advice receiving any adequate attention, much less encourage-
ment ; but we have cited the passage, as bearing respectable testimony, on the
part of Scottish men both ancient and modern, to the good policy of England,
in resisting the attempts of the French, to assume to themselves the Govern-
ment of Scotland, in Mary's name.* We have already produced the testimony
of Frenchmen to the insidious character of their proceedings. Dr. McCrie
himself very justly observes, that the English suffered themselves to be amused
at the treaty of Chateau Cambrensis, while the Courts of France and Spain
concerted measures dangerous to England, and to the whole Protestant interest.
We grant that they appear to have been amused, but in the state of the king-
dom, to which it had been reduced by Mary, it was good policy not to subject
the English interests, at that time, to be quite abandoned by Philip, which was
an object with the French, and one which indeed, as we have before had occa-
sion to remark, they were endeavouring to accomplish, by every means in their
power. It was better to become a party at all events to that treaty, even with the
temporary loss of Calais, as the treaty implied, but which it is well known
the French never meant to regard. Indeed their own historians, to cover
their designs, have continually misrepresented the express obligation of the
treaty, as is well shewn, with respect to Mezerai and Father Daniel, by Rapin.
But while England, for her own security, as it appeared to her wisest
Statesman, interfered in the dispute between the Protestants of Scotland and
the Regent, or rather the French Court, the door of negotiation was not shut
against the latter, but due time given to Francis to withdraw his troops
before they proceeded to extremities ; nor was the opportunity altogether
neglected by the French King, who, with the view of checking the hostile pre-
parations of the English, sent over the celebrated Bishop of Valence, Monluc,
of whose unsatisfactory and suspicious conduct the Council, March 22d, 1559,
gave notice to the Duke of Norfolk, in a letter indorsed by the Secretary,
to the following effect :
" The occasion of Sir Nicholas Strange's longer tarieing here, than my Lord
of Norfolke looked for, proceeded of divers accidents in the French proceed-
* See also Cook's History of the Reformation in Scotland.
144
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
ings here with the Queues Majestie, tending to persuade and intice her to sur-
ceasse from all hostilitie; for which purpose, the better to bring it to passe, the
French King has sent hither of late one M. Monluc, Bishop of Valence,
whose persuasions and excuses for theyr injuries don to her Majestie, in gyving
her armes, and usurping her title and state, are so vayne and evill grounded,
that it is well perceaved they have sought and do seeke nothing els by their
talke but to wynne tyme for themselfves, which hathe been hitherto loste of
our partes, and now therefore with more speede to be recovered."
Professions of amity, while preparations are making for war, have so con-
tinually been known to enter into diplomatic communications, that we can only
cease to wonder at such an apparent breach of honour and confidence, when we
come to know, that they have scarcely in any age been considered as sincere,
and have generally been so reciprocal, as to leave little room for one party to
blame the other. England and France stood clearly in this situation at this
time ; they both made professions of amity, though it seemed impossible to
maintain it ; but it can scarcely be doubted, that the preparations and designs of
England were decidedly defensive, as against the projects of France, which
appeared to be threatening, in a most bare-faced manner, the liberties and inde-
pendence as well of England as of Scotland.
Dr. Cook, whose work we often cite, after noticing the dissimulation both of
Elizabeth and the French Court, as far as regarded their mutual professions,
observes, " It was the happiness of Elizabeth to be served by Ministers, not only
devoted to her interest, and ambitious, through the most faithful discharge of their
duty, to be honoured with her approbation, but who were possessed of the most
splendid talents, and who had frequently exercised these talents in unravelling
the intrigues, and tracing the crooked policy to which France delighted to resort."
One of these ministers was Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, who being sent to
Paris about this time, had the best opportunities of ascertaining the views of
the French Court, and the characters of the persons employed by it. We have
already seen from Lord Burghley's notes, April 1559, that the Bishop of
Valence, Monluc, who appears to have come to England March the 12th, was
assisted by a leger ambassador, as he calls him, De Cevre (De Sevre*), and
on March 2, we find from the same notes, that "a treaty with De Cevre"
was on foot, " for .the revocation of the English army, and the French also, out of
Scotland; but," says the note, " De Cevre delayeth." This minister, Throck-
• His own signature may be seen in Forbes, i. 454.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 145
morton had encountered upon his road to Paris, and the character he gave of
him, in his correspondence with Cecil, and^ in his dispatches to the Council, is
too curious to be omitted.
" If ear be given to honied words — if sweet language will persuade — if
speeches, well applied and couched, will be believed — if large offers of things
and effect of nothing will work, now shall your Lordships know, that he that
can do all these things is now arrived among you ; now shall you well perceive
that the enchanter is come to hand, and will not fail to apply his whole power,
to work that which he can as cunningly handle as any man in Europe. This
man hath from his youth been trained up in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Almain,
and all other places where wisdom and experience are to be learned ; he
knoweth Scotland as well as the countryman ; our country is not unknown to
him ; he speaketh many tongues ; he hath not been in these countries to learn
the tongues only, but he hath so, by experience and good judgment, bridled his
own nature and affectioned passions, wherewith this nation is full fraught, that
he is no more French by outward show than he is Italian, no more Italian than
Spaniard, no more Spaniard in pride than Dutch, nor seemeth to be more
malicious nor suspicious, than if he never dealt with any that are touched
therewith; and as for sobriety, I need no otherwise describe him, than he well
sheweth ; having these things rare in this nation, he is, in my opinion, kept in
store as a select vessel, to be employed in such time as this is, and to be alone
maker of a dissembled friendship, and a soon broken peace.'"
This then was one of the negotiators sent from France upon the occasion,
and his colleague was almost as rare an instance, to say the least, of diplomatic
artifice, shrewdness, and ability; of which a very curious account may be seen
in d'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, where his talents appear to have been
called forth, upon a most extraordinary occasion, the procurement of the crown
of Poland for the Duke d'Anjou, afterwards King Henry III. In Melvil's
Memoirs he makes a curious figure, and indeed his character and talents appear
to have been well suited to the age in which he lived, and the country and
calling to which he belonged.
Sir William Cecil having had the task assigned him of negotiating a peace
with these two intriguing personages, it cannot be out of place, to notice their
characters rather more particularly than might otherwise have appeared
necessary.
Throckmorton, in the accounts he sent to England of the character of De
VOL. II. U
146 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
Sevre, assured Cecil and the Council generally, that the hatred of the House of
Guise to Elizabeth would never be removed ; and that amidst all their professions
of friendship, and all their efforts to conciliate, they were conducting their
warlike preparations with the most unremitting activity ; and to mark more
strongly the characters of those with whom England at this time had to deal,
he assures the Council that amidst all these preparations for war, and
especially for reinforcing the French army in Scotland, the Cardinal of Lorrain
protested that he was quite at a loss to know the grounds of Elizabeth's sus-
picions, and even went so far as to pretend to have been quite ignorant, till
Throckmorton informed him of it, of the assumption of the arms and titles of
England, by Francis and Mary. Throckmorton, as a trusty and observing
Minister, admonished the Queen's Council not to trust "the favvnings," as he
called them, of the French Court, or its Ministers, as he was fully persuaded
they were only seeking to gain time, and to throw Elizabeth oft' her guard.
And indeed it would appear that they had nearly accomplished the latter
points; and that the "honied words," "sweet language," "well applied
speeches," and " large offers," of De Sevre, had well nigh turned the Queen
herself aside from the support of the Confederate Lords in Scotland ; the great
aim and object of the House of Lorrain.* We must forgive Elizabeth, for
having a scruple to support rebels as such ; but the great question was, did the
Lords of the Congregation really stand in the light of rebels ? were they not so
loyal to their country, her rights and liberties, as to be fairly maintaining also
the cause of their Sovereign, could she have been delivered from the trammels
of a foreign connexion, in all ways inimical to the independence of Scotland.
In judging of these points, there is no need to seek an excuse for their pro-
ceedings, in the peculiar spirit of those times, which is certainly required to
excuse many, very many transactions of the sixteenth century. A jealousy of
foreign connexions, and foreign interference, is, in all countries, as much a
principle of modern times, as of those which are past ; we must consider besides,
that the Lords of the Congregation had at this period a new liberty, as it were,
to assert, in support of their religious opinions ; a liberty long trampled upon,
and indeed almost entirely subdued, by an usurped authority, which the imiae-
* In a conference De Sevre had with Elizabeth, and which was continued to an unusual length,
she seems to have been so unable to escape entirely from his ensnaring and ambiguous speeches,
as actually to have been obliged to send Sir William Cecil to answer him more fully and more
explicitly, as may be seen by papers still in existence.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 147
diate connexions and relatives of their Queen were bent upon supporting, but
from which other nations had nobly emancipated themselves, and, as they must
sometimes have reflected, not without the immediate and powerful assistance of
the French themselves ; for it is certainly remarkable, that while Elizabeth and
her Ministers have been blamed for upholding the Scottish Protestants against
the power of France, a measure upon which the security of her crown, her king-
dom, and her person appear constantly to have depended, the Catholic King
and Court of France had been assisting the German Protestants against the
head of the Empire, merely to prevent the too great aggrandisement of the
latter, as a neighbour to France. — We must not look to isolated facts, to account
for the English policy at this time, we should invariably look to the state of
Europe in general ; to the examples England had before her eyes, and the per-
petual warnings she was in the way of receiving, as the subtle intrigues and
rancorous hatred of foreign Courts became more and more known, through the
vigilance of her ambassadors, and their frequent detection of plots and conspiracies.
Twelve days after the arrival of the Bishop of Valence, viz. on the 24th
of March, 1559, we find, in Lord Burghley's notes, the entry following:—
" March 24. A proclamation by hir Majesty to declare hir mind to keep
peace both with France and Scotland, notwithstanding the occasions given by
the Fr. King and his wife, the Q. of Scotts, in claiming the title to the Crown."
This proclamation is to be seen at length in Haynes's Burghley Papers, taken
from a minute of Secretary Cecil and Sir William Petre ; and as the original is
in the hand-writing of the former, it must not be passed by without some obser-
vations : especially as, in most other instances, what appears extremely judicious
and wise to one party, is deprecated as exactly the contrary by writers of a dif-
ferent stamp. Dr. Lingard calls it " a most extraordinary state paper, entitled a
Declaration of Peace, but intended as a Justification of War ; it made a distinc-
tion between the French King and Queen and their Ministers ; the former were
the friends of Elizabeth, who strictly forbade any injury to be offered to their
subjects : the latter were her enemies ; and to defeat their ambitious views, she
had taken up arms, and would not lay them down till she had expelled every
French soldier from the realm of Scotland."
Wishing only to do common justice to the framers of this celebrated memorial,
and especially to the principal author of it, Sir William Cecil, we shall let it
speak for itself, by inserting such parts of it as seem to bear most immediately
upon the exact circumstances of the case. It begins with observing how exceed-
]48 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
ingly obvious it had for some time appeared, not only to the natural born
subjects of the Crown of England, but to strangers in all parts of Christendom,
that, by many occasions, the French had given ground to doubt and fear an
invasion of England by the way of Scotland, rendering it thereby necessary for
the Queen, with all speed, to apply convenient power to withstand the same.
" Yet," it proceeds, " the Q.'s most excellent Majestic, considering that ther may
be diversitie of opinions conceaved of her proceedings in this behalfe, heth
thought mete breafly and playnly to notifie hir Majeste's certayne purpose and
intent, with the just occasion given thereof."
" First hir Majestic— is content to thinke that the injurious pretences, made
by the Q. of Scotland to this realm — hath been bred and issued only out of
the hearts of the principalls of the House of Guise, to whom the chief govern-
ance of the crowne of France now of late hath happened ; and that neither the
French King, being by reason of his yong yens, not so capable of such an
enterprise, nor the Queue of Scotts his wief, also being in her minoritie, nor yet
the princes of the blud royal, and other estates of France (to whom heretofore
in auncient tyme the Governance of the affaires of that realm in the king's
minoritie hath belonged) have imagined and intended of themselves suche an
unjust, unprobable, and so dangerous an enterprise and attempte as this is, and
appereth to be to all indifferent men." It then notices the assumption of
the arms and titles so often mentioned before, and which the Princes of the
Kings blud in France, and other great personages there, were reported to have
rather discouraged than advised ; it proceeds to the attempts making in Scot-
land, " to enterprise the eviction of the Crowne of Scotland, out of the power
of the naturall people of the land ; and thereby to precede with such force, as
under that collour they have already partly, and partly hereafter me'ane to send
thither, to invade this kingdom of England ; which although they have caused
to be unjustly and dishonorably claymed so many ways by their Neice, yet
they well know that otherwise, than by the way of Scotland, they can never
effectually, according to their desires, offend with any evident danger. — There-
fore her Majestic— taking these insolent attempts to be but the abuse of the
said house of Guise, during the minoritie of both king and queen, without any
consent of the greater states, of France — doth give to understand to all manner
of people, that although her Majestic hath byn forced to put in order, to her
great charge, certayn forces both by sea and land, for the save garde of hir
kingdome, being thus impeched and challenged by words, and so approached
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 149
with force, and menaced with much greater from day to day, yet hir Majestic
meaneth not, nor intendeth any manner of crueltie, hostilitie, or warre ; but
only seeketh and wisheth, and so hath divers tymes playnly and frendly
required of the Cardinall of Lorrayn and his brother, and by means of them, of
the French King also, that these insolent titles and claymes might cease and
be revoked ; and that ther might be, such a quiet and naturall governance
graunted to the people of Scotland, that they might lyve in their due obedience
to their Sovereign Lady (which they offer) without further oppression and fear
of conquest ; and consequently that the men of warre of France in Scotland
might be revoked, being by reason of the former proceedings of France, in
theyr claymes against this kingdome, over daungerous to be suffered so nigh
England ; and for the more speed therein, it hath been offered that they should
also have safe conduct, by water or by land, or by bothe, with all favour and
suertie, that might be shewed, or devised for their departure ; and according to
their cessing from armes, hir Majesties by sea and land, should also at one
instant accordingly cease and be ceassed, and thereby all unkindness to be
buried and forgotten, and a stable peace made.
" To whiche godly, reasonable and honorable, sundry requests, hir Majestic can
by no meanes get any sufficient Answer, although moche tyme hath bynn
herein spent, to hir Majestie's excessive charge, and to the manifest delay of
Concord. And finally, hir Majestic declareth, that she doth and will kepe, and
contyneu good peace with the Kingdome of France, and the Kingdome of Scot-
land, as long as no playn Invasion shall be made by any of them upon hir
Countries, Dominions, or People ; and the French Men of Warre, that will
withstand the same, may departe thens without Harme and in suertie • and if
they will not, then hir Majestic must, of necessitie, after all these other good
Means used, and after all these Delayes made by France, attempt to compel
them to departe thence ; and otherwise to shew no extremitie nor violence to
any Manner of Person of France or Scotland ; and therefore hir Majestie
straytely chargeth all manner hir subjects, of what estate soeuer they be, that
they shall use with favour and friendship, all the French King's Realme, in
such sorte as in Tymes of best peace hath bynn and ought to be used, except
they shall be provoked by any hostilitie of any of the parte of France to defend
themselfs or their Countrey. And likewise, that all her Majestie's subjects shall
use good and honourable speache of the Kingdom and Nation of France ; and
although these late intolerable injuries hath bynn committed in France against
150 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
this Crown of England, yet to judge thereof no otherwise, than hir Majestic of
hir good Nature is pleased to thinke and judge. And finally, they shall make
no other preparations to Warre, but onely suche as may serve for the Defense
of suche wrongs or attempts, as perchance shall be made, contrary to her
Majestie's Expectation, upon having in their hands the principall Governance
of the King and Quene, untill it shall further appere, whither the said King-
dome and Nation of France shall meane any further playn Invasion of Ail
Realme, and so hir Majesties present Opinion be misconceyved. Wherof
although hir Majestie woold be sorry for the hinderance of common peace in
Christendome, which she most favoreth ; yet it is not to be doubted that
Almighty God shall assist the power of this Kingdom to escape all suche
dangers, and honorably, as case shall require, to avenge itself. And for better
intelligence herof, to all manner of persons, hir Majestie hath willed this to be
proclaimed in English and French, that, although the same have ben especially
declared to the French King, and to the said Principalls of Guise in France,
and also to the Dowager Quene of Scotland, and to all the Ambassadors of
France here resident, (whereunto no sufficient Aunswer can be obtayned) yet, it
shuld not be hid from others, thatpercase might be induced otherwise to thinke
or judge than the very truthe is. Given at Westminster, the 24th of March
1559. God save the Quene."
We cannot help thinking this might as fairly be called a Declaration of Peace,
as a Justification of War. The object certainly was to drive the French farther
from the most vulnerable part of England, on grounds of suspicion, furnished
by the French themselves. The Family of Guise most undoubtedly had chal-
lenged the Crown of England,* as the just inheritance of their niece ; Scotland
was the most practicable way to it, and in endeavouring to obtain it in that
direction, they were prepared to tyrannize over Scotland, to contemn all those
who from their birth might most reasonably have looked to be entrusted with
the governance of the realm in the Queen's absence, to set at nought all preten-
sions to a natural governance, and, above all, to extirpate as heretics a party
• See the Memorial for the Queen, May 2, 1560, taken from a copy indorsed by Cecil, in
Forbes, Vol. i. 4'20, beginning, " The French Queen hath all this last year borne the arms of
England, as Queen of England, by all manner of ways convenient to notify the same ; by her own
speech; by her ushers; by her own writings, private and public; by inscriptions in all her
triumphs; by her heralds. The French King also hath jointly in grants and commissions, &c.
dated the same ANNO HEGNI NOSTRI ANGLIJE et HIBERNJ* PRIMO."
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 151
having, by this time, at its head, the prime nobility of the Kingdom ; and
which, on account of its religious principles and professions, might reasonably
be looked to, as a formidable and respectable barrier to England, against the
encroachments and well-known purposes of France. The weakness of the
Scottish frontier ought to be taken into consideration ; the proclamation pre-
sumes that the French Court meant to take advantage of that weakness, with a
sort of spirited contempt of all attacks elsewhere. The Queen of Scot's title to
the English Crown was, if valid and good, as good any where else as in Scot-
land ; but the push was, to all appearance, and by all the reports made to Govern-
ment, reserved for Scotland ; " for that they well know," says the Proclamation.
" that otherwise than by the way of Scotland, they can never effectually, accord-
ing to their desires, offend, with any evident danger ;" that is to England, which
it required some courage to say, in the then unprovided state of the kingdom, and
considering that the French forces, ejected from Scotland, might be turned against
England elsewhere. Scotland was the most vulnerable point to England.
With those who are constantly bent upon throwing all the blame upon
Elizabeth, her council, her great minister Cecil, and her vigilant and able
ambassadors, it seems to be forgotten, that not to provide against danger, not
to foresee danger, not to be suspicious of neighbours,* is the very acme of
* Among the ministers or diplomatists of Elizabeth, who were forward to guard her against the
ambitious designs of the house of Guise, there was one, to whom the Catholic writers can have no
fair reason to object ; we mean Dr. Wotton, Dean of Canterbury and York ; the testimony of
this very able man, may with no small propriety be adduced in vindication, not only of the
above proclamation, but of the constant care which Cecil took to ward off the dangers to be
apprehended from the ambitious projects of the Guises. The letter was written only two
months after the death of Mary, by one of her own accredited ministers, a Papist and dignitary
of th« Church. It was addressed to Cecil, the new minister of the new Queen, both being Pro-
testants ; whereby we may collect these two facts ; first, that Cecil had so conducted himself
under Mary, as to merit the confidence of her old counsellors, and secondly, that as a Catholic,
there was no want of loyalty towards Elizabeth in the writer of the letter ; he, thus then
expresses his sentiments, as a man of observation and experience, with regard to the designs and
ambitious projects of the Guises : —
" Who shal consyder diligentlye these things, canne not as I thinke, but sumwhat suspecte
the French offers ; yea, though they be at first leering, plaisant, and sweete: and chiefly con-
sidering that the Howse of Guises greatnesse and authorite dependitb chieflye upon the great
commodite that France hathe, and lokith to have by this marriage of Scotland, and therefor
whatsoever they shal saye, singe, or pype, theyr meaning and yntent canne be none other, but to
seeke all the means possible to encrease the powre and honour of theyr neece the Queen of
152 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
weakness in a statesman ; " qui vult decipi, decipiatur," is a maxim, of which
diplomatists should never be unmindful. As far as it is possible for ourselves to
form any correct judgment of the transactions in Scotland, of which we are writ-
ing, we should decidedly say, the Queen's proclamation was borne out by facts;
perfectly pacific if, the French chose to be so, upon grounds of undoubted security
to England ; but otherwise, if by the insolence of the French Court, or the most
notorious duplicity, they should be working in secret any detriment to the
Queen's crown, her just rights, or the freedom of her subjects; to use the words
of a modern writer of no small celebrity, as a friend to liberty (the Abbe de
Mably), we may truly say of the times of which we are writing, " L' art de
negocier n' etoit encore, que 1' art d' intriguer ;"* and more strongly as to the
means of resisting premeditated mischief, " Je 1' avoue : la vertu denuee de force
ne passe que pour foiblesse : et un etat qui ne se defendroit centre des voisins
puissans, que par sa justice et sa moderation, seroit tot ou tard opprime"
If Lord Burghley (Sir W. Cecil as he then was) offended, as the passage we
have cited from Dr. Lingard's history implies, by making a distinction between
the French King and Queen, and their Ministers, the remark of the Cardinal
de Lorrain, referred to in his note] (65), shews that they were not backward, on
the other side the water, to adopt the same measure of defence.
" It is a poor revenge," said he to the English minister, Throckmorton, "that
hath been used of late by your proclamation in England against my brother
Scotts, and of her posteritye ; which will be the securyti and chief staffe and piller that the
Howse of Guvse shall have to blame and to trust to ; and for the encrease and advancement of
theyr neeces authoiite what cowde they wyshe more, than that England mighte be brought
under Fining by the pretence of the Queen of Scotts faynidde title to the crowne of England?
and therefor whosoever canne be otherwyse inducidde to beleeve of the Howse of Guyse, is, yn
my mindf, very lane deceyvid ; yea, although they wolde shew to be content, that that tytle
shold he renounced: for I have seene menne that use to leape : they go a good way back to
leapc the. further; and so 1 feare, that though they shuld use any such renunciation (which
ynd.-ede ran be of none effect, for that the Scottish Quene is under yeres), yet that shuld be
done to leape further ; that is to say, not for bicause the renunciation shuld take place yndeede,
but onlye thereby to worke so that they the better come to theyr purpose. Yf you wolde
imarryne a treatye to be made, whereyn are many and divers articles conteynid, and amongst
other such a renunciation ; you know, that yf one article of that treatye be broken, that all the
rest, renunriation and all, is voyde and of none effecte, and the French, though they ever
breal e and gyve occasion first to breake ; yet they ever beare the other yn hande, that the other
have broken first: and so commenlye all treaties deludidde and frustatidde that are made with
theym. • De Principes des Negociations.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 153
and me ; but we take it that it is not the Queenes doing, but the persuasion
of thre or foure about her ; and as I trost to see shortlie that she woll be
better advised, so we hope, that er it be long, she will put her hand to punysh
them for gyving her such advice." — Forbes, i. 423. Could there any stronger
instance be adduced, of making, what Dr. Lingard calls, a distinction between
the Queen and her Ministers ?
But the fact really is, that the Guises were, at this time, the predominant
party in the French Court, so much so, indeed, as to excite great jealousies
and heart-burnings amongst those who saw with disgust the transfer of the
royal power ; the Queen Mother herself being one, the King of Navarre, and
his brother the Prince de Conde also ;* but more particularly the Constable
Montmorency, the great enemy of the Guises, the great friend and favourite
of Henry II., and so far the friend of England, that he had particularly inter-
posed to prevent, if he could, the assumption of the English arms and titles
by Francis and Mary. Camden, alluding to the part Elizabeth took at this
time, and her proclamation in particular, says, from this time she became "to
her friends an admiration, and terror to her foes."
We have already noticed one extraordinary entry in Lord Burghley's notes*
relative to the Spanish ministers, the Bishop of Aquila, and M. Glasion ; but
we have cause to repeat it : " April 10. [1560] M. de Glason came and joyned
with the Bishop of Aquila to move revocation of the army out of Scotland, but
Glason, privately to my Lord Admiral, and me the Secretary, counselled us
to the contrary.'1''
In Haynes's Burghley papers are to be seen three remarkable documents
upon this head. The first is entitled, the Spanish Ambassador's declaration to
Sir Francis Knollys, April 8, 1 560, indorsed by Secretary Cecil. The second
is the answer to this declaration from a minute of Secretary Cecil ; and the
third, the " bref information to M. de Glasion of the Queues proceedings from
the begynning ;" already mentioned.
These papers are too long to introduce here, but they may be easily read in
Haynes ; and the principal intelligence to be drawn from them, as applicable
to the subject of this Memoir, seems to us to be, that the policy of England, with
regard to the designs of the French in Scotland, was perfectly understood on the
Continent; that the danger to which England might be exposed by Scotland's
falling into the power of the French Court, then at the disposal of the Guises,
* See Dictionnaire Historique, art. FRANCOIS II.
VOL. II. X
154 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
was nothing chimerical, but too apparent to be doubted, by those who were
capable of taking a comprehensive view of the precise state of affairs. From
the first paper it appears, that King Philip judged it to be quite right (" alloweth
well," is the expression in the original) that the Queen should stand upon her
guard ; and to the end she might have her realm in safety, " out of the danger
of the French," Glasion was sent to mediate a peace. But, that Philip would
aid the French in chastising the rebels there, if Elizabeth should take part
with them.
We see here how much might depend on the term rebels* If the Lords of
the Congregation, and Protestants generally, were decidedly to be regarded as
rebels, Elizabeth was likely to be as much against them as Philip. Glasion 's
commission, as it stood at this time, seemed to lay him under an obligation to
join his colleague, the Bishop of Aquila, and the French negotiators, in so-
liciting the Queen to revoke her army ; but as his own Ideas were not clear
upon this head, he expressed a desire, that if the army were not revoked, it
might be restrained from acting for forty or fifty days, to afford him an oppor-
tunity of fresh communications with his Sovereign.
The remainder of the paper contains, as we take it, Sir Francis Knollys' own
opinion upon the answer to be given to the Ambassador ; it touches, ot course,
upon the claim to the English Crown on the part of Mary, incited thereto by
her maternal relatives ; and on the danger that might ensue from the too near
neighbourhood of the French forces, (" Men of Warre," in Scotland,} and of the
necessity therefore, under which the Queen lay, of procuring, or compelling
their removal, if fair means would not do ; observing, however, that she had
offered to the French ambassadors to withdraw her troops, if the French would
do the same, " upon the dewe acknoledging by the said Skottes of their alle-
giance unto theyre Quene, and to hyr husband the Frenche Kyng also in hyr
ryght;" which, it is added, was partly by them (the ambassadors) thought
reasonable. Then follows the answer suggested, more particularly as it re-
garded Philip.
" And unles it myght appere, that the Frenche had ruled in Skotland
according to the decrees and compacts made betwene these two realmes, and that
the Skottes had rebelled or resisted, without injurie or kreache of compacts offered
unto theym, we suppose and hope, that the Kyng Katholyke wolle not assyste,
* See a curious passage in Sadler and Croft's letter to Sir William Cecil, Sept. 8, 1559. Sad-
ler's Letters, vol. ii. 432. and see particularly Throckmorton's letter to the Queen.— Forbes, i. 336.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 155
and ayde the Frenche to the Ckastysment and Bondage of the Skottes, and to
the satysfying of the unsatyable desyer of the Frenche, that thereby seekethe
the conqwest of this realme. But rather we trust that the Kyng Katholike woll
helpe to staye the gredyness of the Frenehe, to the conservatyon of the Skottes
in theyr freedome and lybertie, syns the Crowne of Skottland ought to retorne
to the mere Skottish nation, yf the Quene dye without yssue, as hetherto she
hathe none ; and syns this realme shal be in dawnger of conqwest, yf the Skotts
shalbe brought into bondage by conqwest of the Frenche."
We see nothing in this answer but what the actual state of things appeared to
warrant. The liberties of the Scots, whether Catholic or Protestant, were to all
appearance in great danger : compacts had been brokenby the French, and there
seemed to be a great design on foot to take the government of the kingdom out
of the hands of the " mere Scottish nation." These things require constant
attention. England has been reproached for her desire to foment quarrels in
Scotland, merely to further her own ends ; but, in all cases, we shall see the
real and essential interests of Scotland were interwoven with those of England.
To the moment of the last most fatal and deplorable catastrophe, foreign inter-
ference and Catholic influence were the foundation of all the troubles incident
to the northern portion of the island during the sixteenth century. But to
return to the papers in Haynes.
In consequence, probably, of Sir Francis Knollys' communication, the second
paper, called an Answer to the Declaration of Mons. de Glasion, the Spanish
ambassador, appears to have been drawn up by Sir William Cecil. The
beginning is very remarkable.
" First, lyke as the King Catholique, notwithstanding the dyvers complaynts
made to hym by the French, was pleased of mere good will towards the Queens
Majesty, not only to excuse her preparations, but also to allowe the same : so hir
Majesty thynketh surely that if he had also heard hir ambassadors, before the
sending away his mynd and instructions to Monsieur de Qlasion, he wold have
not only allowed her preparations, but wold also have sent hir advise, not to indure
the danger that hir realme stode in by the French proceedings in Scotland."
This passage is the more important as tending to explain the secret counsel
given by De Glasion to Sir William and the Lord Admiral, which appears to
be his own private opinion of the manifest designs of the French, to which his
public commission did not reach. He was commissioned to mediate between
the Queen and the French ; and he found the revocation of the English army
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
insisted upon as a preliminary measure ; but being upon the spot, and, therefore,
enabled the better to see through the actual designs of the French, however var-
nished over, he could not help privately concurring with Elizabeth's ministers in
the necessity of keeping it where it was.
Elizabeth's ministers, Lord Montague, and Sir Thomas Chamberlayne, being
in Spain, it was to be hoped that Philip would by that time know the actual
state of affairs almost as well as M. de Glasion, and, therefore, encouragement
seems in this answer to be given to the latter to expect from Philip an approval
of his more private opinion in not insisting too earnestly upon the revocation of
the army.
The third paper contains, therefore, such information as might the better
prove to M. de Glasion the real and actual urgency of the case and grounds of
the Queen's proceedings. This paper is so important, that we know not how to
abridge it, especially as it touches upon the two hazards apparent to England :
first, the invasion of the latter country by the French, after they should have
overcome the Scottish Protestants, or, the making up of the differences subsisting
between the Scots and French, which might terminate in a joint invasion of the
Queen's dominions. It is impossible to judge aright of the statesman-like
prudence, foresight, and precaution of Lord Burghley (so frequently, in super-
ficial, partial, and even fictitious writings, branded with the names of craft,
deceit, and perfidy), without a full and perfect understanding of the actual
dangers with which his country and his Sovereign were incessantly threatened.
" A breeff information to M. de Glasion, of the Quenes Majestys proceedings
from the begyning.
" First, when it was understand the last yere, sone after the peace made, that
the French King was dyurse wayes provoked, by the Duke of Guise, and the
Cardynall, and his sistar, the Quene Dowager in Scotland, to entitle there nece,
the Quene of Scottes, to the Crown of England ; and that at length the matter
was so obteyned, that by many manner of wayes it appered well to the world,
what there purpose was, both in France and in Scotland ; yea contynually so
advertised out of all courtes, and covertly also signifyed to the Quene's Majesty
from the King Catholique, both by the Conte de Feria, by John de Ayalu, and
by the Bishop of Aquila: hir Majesty thought to coverr hir understanding
hereof, and trusted that the howse of Guise shuld not so prevaile, for there owne
particular ambition, as to cause the French Kyng to enter into oppen war for
the
same.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 157
" Yet, nevertheless, when the practice increased, and that the Dolphyn and
his wiffe revealed to the world this intent, by taking the arms of England, and
after a despitefull manner hung them up in June last, in all oppen places
of tryumphees in Parisse, yea, upon the stage where the judges sat to judge,
uppon the Tornage there, and the Harrolds also of the Dolphyn proceding
his band of horsemen wer newly arrayed therewith : hir Majesty then began to
looke more about hir; and yet thought not to make any oppen quarrel, but
caused hir ambassador to complayne thereof, as of his own minde to the
Constable, who although he made hymself ignorant thereof, because he sayd,
that the Messiers de Guise entermedled in those kynd of matters, and that the
marriage was made whilst he was prisoner in Flanders ; yet he willed the embas-
sador to forbeare any furder complaynt, for he wold speke to them of Guise in it,
and it shuld be remedyed.
" Hereuppon the King dyed, and then the administration of the affaires cam
to the hands of the Cardynall and his brother ; whereuppon followed dayly more
manifestation of there purpose. For beside the universall changing of the
Scottish Queue's arms in hir clothes of estate, in hir hangings, hir plate, and
vessell, hir chappell, hir wrytings, hir styles, yea, hir own manifest allegations
of hir right, hir evill words of the Quene's Majesty of England, against hir right,
they began to make divers preparations to the sea, rigged there shipps, amassing
all along the sea-coast of Pickardy and Normandy a grate quantitie of artillery,
specially of brass peces, as cannons and such lyke ; then also began they to send
and practise secretly in Almayn for bands of horsmen and footmen. All these
she collored under the pretense of subduing of a few of the nobilitie and gentle-
men of Scotland, whom the Queen there sought to have put to deth for certen
quarrels which she pretended against them, for matters of religion ; having
before licensed the same to use the freedom of their conscyence (which was only
in the last Lent before) to receave the Sacrament under both kynds. And
in this matter it is very notorioose, how the conqueste of that realm was divers
ways sought, as upon that matter there is so much to be sayd, as it is too gret
shame for the French ministers there to have their practices disclosed ; but that
matter is to be best herd betwixt the French Kings ministers and the subjects of
the land.
" When these thyngs had thus proceeded two or or three months togither,
fynding every day to disclose more than another, then dyd the Queues Majesty,
uppon many deliberations had with her Counsell, fynding this matter very dan-
158 MEMOIRS OF LORD BCRGHLEY. [1560.
geroose, and lykely to break owt with spede, (specially as soon as they tnight
convey their powers of men of warr, their victalls, munition, and artillery into
Scotland,) thynk it most necessary to cawse her ships to be revewed, and put in
some order, and to send for such armore and munition, as she had bought in
the Lowe Country ; and furder also to muster her realme, and so to begin some
manner of preparations.
" Thus being past, June, July, August, and September, and findying that grete
quantitie of vittalls, munition, and artillery was caryed in this tyme into Scot-
land, and tta numbers, of men caryed also thither ; and now being brought into
gret dowte what the French jfiness might be, to pretend a tumult in Scotland ;
or at the least, though some disorder wer there, the same being but a discord, for
the maner of governance, and for breaking the pacts with Scotland, they might
soddenly accord all those quarrells amongst themselves, and so joyn both their
forces and make a sodden invasion upon England, and surprise Berwick for this
purpose : it was thought necessary to augment the garrison of Barwyk, and
to survey the weakness and wants thereof, and November following, to make a
preparation of all things mete, both for to furnish Barwyk, and other forts there,
and to send the same by sea. Then followed also, intelligence had out of
France, what grete nomber of shipps were prepared to conduct men into Scot-
land, and how La Bross and the Bishop of Amyens were also passed thyther,
with certayn nombers ; and the Marques d'Elbceuff and Martigues shuld also,
with all spede possible, passe with a grete army into Scotland ; whereupon
there was no way thought more convenient to prevent and withstande this so
dangerous a matter, than to augment the Navy, that should go into the North,
and to make them able to withstand any Enterprise to be done, &c. &c."
The paper ends abruptly, but the information it contains is certainly very
important. It bespeaks an attention to the actual danger of the country, which,
perhaps at the time, might be its salvation. It is impossible, we should think,
to doubt, that without such prompt attention to the strength of the kingdom in
the north, facilities might have been afforded to the invasion of it by the French,
and possibly, by the French and Scots united ; for had the Protestant party
been brought to recant, or being overcome, left the French and Scottish Ca-
tholics to act with full force upon England, it could not be supposed that any
particular good-will towards the latter kingdom would have prevented their
cordial co-operation in such an undertaking. England was, through the pre-
valence of most unfortunate jealousies, still too much regarded as Scotland's
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 159
" Ould Enemie," to expect much mercy from a junction of that nature, par-
ticularly at such a period. Had not the Reformation attained a footing in
Scotland, nothing perhaps, at this time, could have saved England ; this evi-
dently produced a feeling towards the latter, and towards the Protestant Sove-
reign of the latter, which brought the people of the two kingdoms into closer
contact, softened former antipathies, and produced as it were a common feeling ;
a feeling, as far as regarded the dangers to both countries from the ambition of the
Guises, the most creditable and respectable ; for it is absurd to talk of the Lords ot
the Congregation being rebels. A Regency is very different from the full Sove-
reignty of a kingdom : we ought, from the experience of the most modern times,
to know, bow fair a right the natural subjects of any well regulated state have
to demur to the arbitrary appointment of a Regent. The Queen Mother of
Scotland might have very reasonably been complimented, as she had been, with
the Regency, as the widow of a deceased Sovereign, and the mother of a living
one ; but when the ancient rights of the kingdom, and the reversionary rights of
the presumptive heirs to the Crown, were, through the connexions of such a Re-
gent, judged to be in danger from foreign influence, who would venture to call
the opposers of such anti-constitutional measures, rebels! Of the rights of
conscience we have said but little, since there were sufficient political reasons
for endeavouring to resist the arbitrary Government of a foreign Regent ; but of
the little chance there was of obtaining from the French permission to profess or
entertain the Protestant faith, we have a good proof in the dispatches of Lord
Montague and Sir Thomas Chamberlayne, from Philip's Court at Toledo. In
one of which, when they describe the interest Philip was taking in the dispute
between France, and Scotland supported by England, they write, " The French
King woulde be content to leave the Queue's Majestys' Title and Stile — he
wolde remitte and pardon the Scotts of all things past, and leave them to their
auncyent liberties and government, with some personage amongethem ; and that
in respect of alteration of Relygion, whiche he will not indure, neyther this
King, as we do perceive, will Counsell him thereto." In the same Letter they
observe, that the French, in order to fix Philip the more strongly on their side,
had been careful to attribute all the disturbances in Scotland to the English,
"as Fautors of the Protestant Religion." — Haynes, 285, 6.
Monluc, Bishop of Valence, having failed in his embassy to London, as far
as regarded the revocation of the English army, desired to have a safe conduct
to Edinburgh, to confer with the Queen Regent, having, as he alleged, com-
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [156<X.
mandroent from the King, his master, "totravell betwixt the Queen Dowager
and the Scots, for an accord and pacification of their greefs;" this was not
denied him, Killegrew being appointed to accompany him, with ample directions
from the Council to the Duke of Norfolk, to afford him every protection, " except
he should give contrary occasion, by demonstration of any outward acts of
mallice to the realms of England."
There was not, as we have before hinted, in all Europe, a more subtle, artful,
or able negotiator, than this Bishop of Valence ; so that it was a matter of
very reasonable prudence, to keep a vigilant eye upon him. Camden says
of him, that he was " a man not averse from the Protestant profession ;" but
how this was proved, in his negotiations upon the present occasion, we should,
we must confess, be at a loss to shew, unless the French allegations afterwards —
that he exceeded his commission — were true. Cecil and his coadjutor, Dr.
Wotton, as we shall soon have to shew, certainly gained advantages over him in
favour of the Scottish Protestants, but he threw too many impediments in the
way, to make it doubtful that he was acting in behalf of the French party.
The Duke of Norfolk was not long established in the north, before he disco-
vered the purposes of the French to be such as Cecil suspected ; that to go
through with the exploit of assisting the Protestant association, to expel the
French, was, to use his own words, " the only way for the preservation of her
Highnesse own person, her realm, and her honour." He plainly saw, that any
waste of time, or slackness of supply, might be almost fatal to England. He
ventured even to remonstrate against the parsimony of the Queen, insisting, in
his letters, that unless good care were taken, the Queen's Majesty, " to save a
pound, might ere longe have cause given her to spende tenn."* " I am sure ye
cann well ynoughe consider," he writes to the Secretary, " that as long as the
Dowagier remayneth the Re'wler, with a garrison of French, be it never so small,
they may, when theyr strengthe is ready, and ours unfurnished, quickly revenge
themselfs of them, whom the Quenes Majestic hathe nowe taken to her protec-
tion. In this case (methinks) the Quenes Majestie's Honour and the suretie of
her realme is much to be regarded : for eyther ye shall see it com to this pass,
or else, for necessyties sake, the Scots, to make amendes, shalbe fayne to joine
themselfs with the French, to be our utmost enemyes." — The Duke wrote at the
same time, and in the same strain, to the Lords of the Council.
* Haynes, 284.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 161
The taking of Leith from the French was, in truth, found to be a harder task,
than the Government at home seemed to expect ; the army was not allowed to
attack Edinburgh, partly out of respect to the Queen Dowager, who had retired
thither, and partly that it might the better appear that it was not its object to
make conquests, but only to assist in restoring the nation to a free and willing
obedience to their natural Sovereign, the Queen of Scots.
To shew, however, how perfectly at this time the French were baffled in their
designs, by the proceedings of the English Government, the French Commis-
sioners, in order to induce Elizabeth to withdraw her armies from Scotland,
ventured so far as to hold out to her a prospect of the restitution of Calais, the
loss of which, in the last reign, was known to have been regarded, by the
English, as one of the greatest disgraces and heaviest calamities that could well
have befallen their country. But Elizabeth seized the opportunity of manifesting
her spirit, upon an occasion so tempting. " She answered flatly," says Camden,
" that she little esteemed Calice, a poor fisher-town, in comparison of the
safety and security of all Britain."
It was in the beginning of April 1560, that the English army first appeared
before Leith ; which, as has been before shewn, the Queen Regent had been
careful to fortify, sorely against the will of the confederate Lords, it being the
key of Scotland, a fit place for the landing and security of auxiliary forces, and
admirably situated as a depot for provisions, ammunition, &c.
The first attacks, however, of the English and Scots united, were not so
successful as to afford them the encouragement they expected ; and jealousies in
the English camp, if not some treachery, were supposed too much to retard
matters, until the Duke of Norfolk, by a timely addition of fresh troops, rendered
the desperate situation of the French so apparent, as to dispose them to listen to
terms of accommodation, and which ended indeed in their acceptance of the
famous treaty of Edinburgh, a treaty which, had it been subsequently ratified,
might have given a different turn to the whole course of affairs, and saved
Mary, perhaps, from many bitter misfortunes. To negotiate this treaty it was,
that Sir William Cecil, " a learned and prudent person," as Buchanan styles
him, was specially dispatched to Scotland, to treat, in conjunction with Dr.
Wotton, with Montluc and M. Rochefoucauld Randon.
While the army lay before Leith, much time appeared to have been wasted,
and much advantage to the English and Scots lost, by communications between
the two parties, tending to a treaty, but in which the Duke did not like to
VOL. II. T
102 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
place any confidence, though of Sir Ralph Sadler, who was sent to the camp
for these purposes, he judged most highly. " I have received," he wrote to the
Secretary, on the 15th of April, "this daie the Queue's Majesties and your
lettres, of the 9th of this monetb, by the whiche I do gather the good will that
the Quene's Majestic hathe to accord these great matters with an amycable
peace, for which cause her Majestie wisheth Sir Ralph Sadlyer to be sent
thyther, who already is gonn : of whom the Quene's Majestie doth gather no
frustratt opynyon, in chusing him as the metest instrument to serve her Majestie
there; who, making no comparyson, is best estemed by the Scots, of any
Englishman, and with his creditt there is liable to do most for the Quene's
service." — Notwithstanding which high compliment to Sir Ralph, he speaks
much more highly of the mission of Sir William himself; on which account,
the whole letter indeed may reasonably be transcribed : it is dated May 27,
1560. On the 30th, Sir William quitted the Court for Scotland. The letter
is as follows : " 1 have received your most freendlie letters of the 23d of this
present, good Mr. Secrctarie, wherein I founde nothing, but that I hope shall
redownde to the honor of the Quene's Majestie, and weale of both these realmes.
In the first parte, I perceave you have resolved upon a sure grownde, whiche is to
send me into Scotland, with such a nombre of men, as shall be able to performe
that whiche shall be committed to my charge : secondarilie, of a nevve treatie,
wherein I perceave you and my uncle Wooton are commissioners; which name
of treaty, although dilatorie handling (alluding to the parleys before Leith) hathe
made odious, yet your true and faythefull zeale, to bring this tiling to good
effect, is so well knovven, as that which afore was so displeasant, is nowe, I dare
saye, because you shall be the agent in this case, most wished for : and if you
be so to others, howe can it be, but that you must be most welcome to me ;
considering what a quiet it must be to me, to conferre those cares unto you,
which had not been untold, if wishing might have furdered your desier. I hope,
howsoever the treatie shall speed, you will not forthinke this your journey.
Thus I bid you heartelie farewell. Your most beholding
" THO. NORFOLK."
To my very loving Freende, Sir William Cecil, Knight,
" Principall Secretarie unto the Qucnes Majestie."
But it is proper that we should give some more regular account of the begin-
ning and course of these negotiations, upon which so much of the future history
of the two kingdoms will be found to depend. The first attempts upon Leith,
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 163
by the English and Scots, were not attended with such success (as we have
before shewn) as greatly to dispirit the French, and probably, had not the
Duke of Norfolk strengthened them so opportunely as has been related, there
might have been but small hope of very soon bringing the French to terms ; but
fortunately, at this time, the Princes of the House of Lorrain had other things
to attend to at home — the conspiracy of Amboise, as it is commonly called,
had served to awaken them to a sense of the danger in which they stood from
the efforts of the French Protestants (called from this time Hugonots**), and
disposed them rather to stay the proceedings in Scotland, upon an apprehension
that the French troops might be wanted at home. This induced them, in
the King's name, to send a special and more certain commission to the Bishop
of Valence and the Count de Randon, to treat of peace.
The former had made his appearance at Berwick, in the middle of the month
of April, coming thither with a special recommendation from Cecil to the Duke
of Norfolk, to secure to him every attention suitable to his rank, quality, and com-
mission, unless he should happen to give demonstration of any outward malice
against England. On the 20th of April, after some obstruction from the Lords
of the Congregation, he was allowed to enter Scotland and repair to Edinburgh,
the Duke of Norfolk professing, that he looked for " neyther good nor bad by
his going, though accompted, amongst the Lords of Scotland that knowe him, one
of the finest ingins in Christendome.t" He speaks -afterwards of " the dis-
sembling Bishop's venomous wordes ;" which shews that he himself had no
good opinion of him. He exceeded his safe-conduct by not returning at the
time fixed; " so," says the Duke, " that if he be so coleryke at his commyng to
the Courte, as he hath bene here, you may soon put him to silence, with saying,
that if extremitye were taken, he might be a sufficient prisoner." He seems
certainly to have been very troublesome to the Duke ; for speaking afterwards of
the Secretary's repair to Newcastle, in his way to the North, his Grace says in
his letter, " the Bell-wether of all mischief woll meate with you by the waye,
whose companye, I am sure, you cannot mysse, and if it were for half a score
ihyles. I never had so much ado, as to use temperance with hym : he saw I did
ho way like his doings, nor greatly his companye, and yet I could never be
rydd of his inquisitive hed. I heare that to sum points he will pleade igno-
rance."— Haynes, 322.
« Daniel. + Haynes, 295.
]64 MEMOIRS OF LORB BURGHLEY. [1560.
The Secretary himself set off for Scotland on the 30th of May, with a large
retinue ; in his own notes the entries of this month are as follow :
" May 6. The' first assault at Leith took not good effect.
.<« M. de Randon came to joyn with de Valence to go into Scotland,
and brought commission for themselves, and Bishop of Amiens and d'Oyzell.
" May 10. The Queen writeth to L. Montagu, to return out of Spain.
« 30. Sir William Cecill, Knight, Secretary; and Dr. Wotton, went
towards Scotland, to treat with the French Ambassadors ; * with them were
joyned Sir Ralph Sadler and Sir Peter Carew."
* " Some reverses of fortune at Leith, and the persuasion that the Court of France was sin-
cere, so powerfully inclined the Queen to seek peace, that the Council could not resist her
desire. That they might, however, secure all the objects of importance to England, and that
no advantage in forming the Treaty might be taken by the Bishop of Valence, one of the ablest
Statesmen of his age, Cecil was included amongst the English Commissioners, who, guided by a
sense of public duty, commenced his journey to the borders on the 29th (30th) of May." — Cook's
Reformation of Scotland, ii. 291.
Two letters are still in existence, the contents of which appertain so entirely to this History
as with no propriety to be passed over, though already in print. It will be seen, that the Secre-
tary began his journey northward on the 29th, or, according to his own notes, on the 30th May,
1560. On the 27th he wrote thus, to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in France : —
" Sir, — I am fain to submit my whole stomake to Mr. Killegrew's letters. My journey is to
me very strange, and diversely judged of. My friends in Council think it necessary for the
matter, and convenient for me : my friends abroad think, I am herein betrayed to be sent from
the Queen's Majesty. Whatsoever it is, I content myself with service ; and being wearied at
home, shall feel no difference of trouble abroad. If I may do good, I shall be glad ; but this is
so difficult, that I rather despair. The most comfort is, that by this mean shall be tried, what
we shall trust unto. From Greenwich, the 27th of May 1560.
" W. CECILL."
On the very next day, viz. May 28, Killygrew, alluded to in the above, wrote to Throckmorton
as follows :
" Yours of the 22d of this present I received the 26th of the same ; whereunto I cannot answer
as now, for writing the Secretary's mind unto you ; who for lack of leisure could not, though he
were most willing, attend thereto ; but he continueth wholly yours.
" Upon the return of M. de Valence, the coming of Randon, and our loss at Leith, the Queen's
Majesty has been so desirous of an end in this matter, as it was thought meet, for divers respects
by the Council, that the Secretary should make the same ; who, for his country's sake, hath
been contented to take the matter in hand. The worst has been cast of his absence from hence
by his friends, and at length judged for the best. I know none can love their country better ;
I would, the Queen's Majesty could love it so well. Mr. Secretary, and Mr. Wotton, depart
Northwards to-morrow, with the French Commissioners, for the better ending of these troubles
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
%
The first Letter Sir William wrote to the Court was from Royston, to Sir
William Petre, as follows :
" Sir, — At two of the clocke in the afternoone this last of May, I am in
Royston, in no apparent dout of health, and yet, by the foulness of the wether,
afrayed to ride to Huntyngton until to-morrow. Hyther cam to me all theise
Lettres included, which it may please you to delyvre to her Majesty. They
come from the Duke of Norfolk and Sir P. Caroo.* I send them which cam to
myself from the Erie Morton and Mr. Caroo.* I also send herewith a Lettre to
the Quene's Majesty, for answer to a Lettre sent by Mr. Hampton ; and so I
recommend myself to you and all my good Lords and Frends. Your's assured
at command. From Royston this last of May 1560. " W. CECILL."
" To the Right Honorable Sir William Petre, Knight,
" of her Majestie's Privee Counsell."
On the 2d day of June, and fourth of his journey, he writes again to Sir
Wm. Petre, as follows :
" Sir, — I am come to my howse here at Burley, rubbyng on betwixt helth and
sickness, and yet my hart serveth me to get the mastery :" — he urges a supply of
money ; " if neede shall be, to encouradg men to fight, mony must serve ; if
by Peace they shall return, it may not be spared." Munition also he is earnest
to have dispatched, and he concludes, " I pray you, Sir, doo my humble com-
mendations to all my Lords and the rest; and send my Wiffe word that I have
my helth very well, and in the morning doo depart hence. We trust to be at
Newcastle by the 6th or 7th. This 2d of June, the daye of Comfort, by the
impartyngto us all of the Holy Ghost, 1560. Your's assuredly, " W. C.''
On the 4th of June he writes from Scrooby, purposing to be at Doncaster
that night, and on the Friday following, at Newcastle. In this letter, he
in Scotland ; God send them good speed. Mr. [Sir William] Petre remaineth here. 28th May
1560. " HENRY KYLLYGREW."
On the 29th, the Lords of the Council wrote a very extraordinary letter to Throckmorton, in
positive contradiction of what had been communicated to the Spanish Ambassador in France, by
the Cardinal of Lorrain, relative to the treatment and reception of the Bishop of Valence in
England and Scotland. — Forbes, i. 505-6.
* The different spelling is remarkable ; and the different titles : in Lord Burghley's diary it is
written Sir Peter Carew. — See the preceding page. Such variations are quite common in the
original MSS. of the day.
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [iseo.
f
observes to Sir Witt. Petre, " I perceyve grete lack hereaway of a Bishopp of
York. I thynke if you wold move hir Majesty, she wold pass the Congee
(TEslyer for Dr. Maye. Sorely the sooner it be done the better."
On the 5th of June he writes again, expecting that night to lye at Borough-
bridge. In this letter he notices a curious device of the French to take advan-
tage of the Mission of one of their Ambassadors. " We are marvellosly
troobled, for that we now understand, that the trayne of Monsieur de Randan
be allmost all Captaynes and Ingyners, which meane to be occupyed both
at Barwyk and in Scotland, to enter, if they can, into Lethe; if their salve
conduct served not, they should not depart from Newcastle. And so I end full
wery —
He writes on Thursday 6, from Northallerton, and on the 8th from New-
castle ; at which place he and Dr. Wotton were met by the French ministers.
" We have spent all this afternoone in talk with theis Frenchmen and have
entered into many matters — much has been sayd on both parts, but consy-
deryng we have resolved nothing, we think not mete to molest your Lordships.
We perceive that the Queen Dowager is in great peril! . I, the Secretary,
meane for dyvers respects, as it were by stealth, to mete to-morrow in the
night, with my Lord of Norfolke at Alnwyk ; and so retorning on Monday
in the morning, we will conclude with the French, for their going or
tarrying — ."
On the 1 1th, they write again to the Council, through SirW. Petre, from the
same place. — " We doubte not but ye can considere, that we have to doo with
men here, that leave no waye unsought for theyr purpose, and therfore we are
more occupied in stopping and meeting them to our poore understandings—
your Lordships shall perceave by the Quene's Majesties letters, that now we
be all going into Scotlande ; and besydes dyvers other causes, two principally
move us to accorde thereunto : the one is, the danger of the Queen Dowagers
Lyfe — the other is, we see that, without being nigh the place, we shall not
without much spence of tyme com to an ende — we looke hourly to heare of
the estate of the Queen Dowager ; on Satterday, she was, as we hear say,
speechless." — *
She was, in fact, dead at the time this letter was written : as we find from Lord Burghley's
own notes, June 10. « The English and French Commissioners met at Newcastle. The Queen
Dowager died in Edinburgh Castle." There is a very interesting and affecting account of her
death to be seen in Cook's History of the Reformation in Scotland. She desired to see the
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 167
On the 12th of June, the two Commissioners, Sir William Cecil and
Dr. Wotton, received dispatches from the Court, earnestly recommending to
them to provide for the relinquishment of the English and Irish arms and
titles, as a thing touching highly the Queen's honor and estate, and to
procure some better confirmation and understanding of the Treaty of Cateau,
" because the French in those, and all other theyr promises, do serve the tyme,
and contrary to good faith, pretende matters for their purpose, when they list."
So very earnest does the Queen appear to have been, to obtain compensation
for the affront offered her by the assumption of the titles, &c., that she was for
demanding the restoration of Calais, and 500,000 crowns besides, in the way of
recompense. (See Haynes, 342.) And upon the principle, of which she
reminds Cecil, that Nemo potest servire Deo et Mammona1, she would have had
such Lords as had lands and lordships in France, to renounce them, and become
wholly Scotch, or at least, not so connected with, or dependent upon, France.
There was indeed some reason for this.
On the 15th, Sir W. Cecil writes from Berwick to the Court, as follows :
" We be so traversed with all by this French Bishop, as we can make no
certayntie of our proceedings. All yesterday was spent in articles, touching our
entry, our manner of treaty, the abstinence of warres; and so agreed, as we
determyned to take our journey this morning. Yesternight they forbare
signing of them upon cavillations, and yet gave us hope that they wold finish
them by four a clock this morning; and nowe untill this howre, which is six,
we cannot have speches with them, excusing themselves by long slepe ; and so
we ar in contention about a word; wherein we meane to have the victory, or
els not to depart this daye." In this letter much blame is thrown on Sir
James Crofts, for the disorderly conduct of the army.
In a letter of the 19th, from Edinburgh, the Commissioners complain much
again of the trouble they have with the French negotiators. " Our travels
principal Lords of the Congregation, and expressed to them her concern for the calamities that
had befallen the kingdom ; she exhorted them to labour for peace, and procure the dismissal of
both the French and English forces from Scotland ; she adjured them to continue in allegiance
to their Sovereign, and not renounce the ancient alliance with France; with many tears she
bade them farewell, and, as if anxious to atone for her strong religious prejudices, called for
Willocks, one of the reformed ministers, and died, professing to him her firm faith in the merits
of the Redeemer. This learned historian, with much feeling, deplores the indecent manner in
which her death, after the scene displayed above, was contemplated and publicly spoken of by
Knox.
168 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
and debates with these Frenchmen be not much lesse, than theyres of the
cainpe against the French besieged. We can get nothing but with racking
and streyning ; and we have it inwards ; they alwayes will steale yt awaye in
penning and wryting. If, on the other syde, fayre words and other, specially
of the Bishop, might enter into our conceits to believe him, we might have
with lesse care ended or this tyme, but how well God knoweth; this matter
hath so many crooked points in it to accorde, consydering we deal betwixt a
prince and his subjects, and we have to deal with so croked and subtle a
nation, that truly we must confesse, that whatsoever we shall doe, may easily be
reprehended. We see that this Counsell of Scotlande may be directed to doo
any thing that the Queen's Majestie will command them, but how long that will
indure, God knoweth. [To this letter there is the following postscript:] At
length we are agreed upon our Articles, whereof we cannot send you the Copy.
" Your Lordship's at Commandment,
"W. CECILL, N. WOTTON."
On the 20th of June, Sir William Petre writes from the Court, to Sir William
Cecil, " All men's expectations here and abrode dependeth uppon your doings :
which I pray God may be suche, as with the Quene Majesties honor may
establish us in quietness."
The Lords of the Congregation were very wary at first in trusting to the
treaty on foot: " I fynde some," says Sir William, in a letter to the Duke of
Norfolk, "so deeply perswaded in the matter of religion, as nothing can perswade
them, that maye appere to hinder it." But on the 23d of June, Sir William
Cecil writes to the Court : " This daye the French and the Scottish deputies
dyning at my lodgyng, we have proceeded and accorded most part of the Articles
on both their parts. Wherein our presence prevaileth much, for suerly the
Lords of Scotland would yield almost in no doubtful manner, but to content us:
and yet we do not use any perswasion to discourage them ; but they under-
stond, that we doo most covett an end by peace ; and they say, their debt is so
great to the Queen's Majestie, that whatsoever shal be willed to them, in her
Majestie's name, they will doo it to the hazard of the lifTes and lands — We fynd
a great commoditie in the Lord James, and the Lord Ledyngton,* who be well
content to followe our opinions in any thyng. Suerly the Lord James is a
gentleman of great worthiness."
• On the 25th he writes again, " My Lord of Ledyngton, whose capacitie and creditt is worth
six others, helpeth much in this, or els suerly I see folly wold hazard the whole."
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. lf>0
On the 27th, there appears to have been some difference of opinion between
Sir William and his colleague, Dr. Wotton, upon one article, which rather re-
tarded the conclusion of the Treaty; [see Haynes, 334.] and just afterwards an
incident occurred, which gave the Secretary an opportunity of displaying his
good policy ; artful in its way, but he had a crooked people to deal with. The
French at Leith had lost their Commander, M. de Martigues ; but, " their
hope of peace," says the Secretary, " keepeth the soldiers from tumult."
Hopes of peace, on the part of the French soldiery, were good grounds for
obtaining better terms from the French negotiators. He therefore caused it to
be given out, that peace was not so near, in consequence of the refusal of the
French Ministers to deliver to the Lord Grey fifty of their prime captains or
officers. He caused papers to this effect to be shot into the Tower, and pro-
posing to the garrison that such surrender should be made to the Duke of
Norfolk, who was otherwise coming with sufficient force to subdue them. The
English army, and Lords of the Congregation appear to have been equally
revived and animated by this apparent rupture of the negotiation; but, in his
letter to the Duke of Norfolk, Cecil plainly avows his purposes to have been,
" only to abate the French Embassadors hopes of peace, and to reduce them to
some better terms." [Haynes, 335.]
On the 1st of July, things seemed to be proceeding very untowardly from
the report made to the Queen by Sir William and Dr. Wotton. The great
difficulty was, to procure the French Court in any manner to recognise
or acknowledge the treaty England had entered into with the confederate Lords.
They were subjects, and in the eyes of the French Court, rebels. The difficulty
was certainly no trifling one, and Sir William seems to have felt it in all its
force, as may be seen by his letter of the 19th of June already mentioned;
upon this point, the Treaty had nearly been brought to an abrupt end. The
French negotiators offered to assent to so much of the agreement, or Treaty,
as related merely to the weale of both the realms, and yet, after having made
this offer, they flew from it again, as it appears from the following remark
of the English Commissioners : " We have been content to admitt this, their
own article, and yet they impudently deny it; the Bishop falsely excusing
himself by Randall's (Randon's) denyall." This appears to have been a common
trick with them. In this letter of the 1st of July, a very circumstantial and
curious account is given of the several interviews and,t verbal communications
that took place between the Ministers of the two Courts, but particularly be-
VOL. II. Z
170
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 11560.
tween the Secretary and the Bishop of Valence; and at the end of the letter
aTto be found JLaUn the articles discussed, with the result of such d.cus-
sions as affecting each of the articles severally. They are very curious : the
:; marked G,l noted to have been « stiffly denied, M*****
was gotten ;" and the account in the letter relating to this article is as follows
« To all other theyr scruples noted in our articles, we yelded and bent our
selves to their bowes, saving in one, wherein we obtayned with great difficult*
to be confessed in wordes, that the Realm of England and Irelande of jht
appertayned to your Majestie-n which point I your Secretary was moved
excede some discretion, but not my duty, and offered in that quarrell to spe
my blood upon any of them that would deny it, but yet without much vel
mency and some threatening it was not obtayned."
The article thus difficultly obtained was as follows : « Cum Regna Angtie
et Hibemus ad dictam Serenissimam Dominam et Principem Elizabethan jm
spectantet pertineant, etproinde nulli alteri se dicere, scribere, nommare, s
intitulare, nee dici scribi, notificari, aut intitulari facere, regem aut regmam
An*lie et Hibtrnite, neque insignibus et armis vulgaritur dictis (Armoynes)
regnorum Anglia aut Hibernia sibi arrogare, aut uti liceat : id circo statu
pactum et conventum est, quod dictus Rex Christianiss. et Regma Mar
uterque eorum abstinebunt, &c.—
There was still, however, another point, more difficult, if possible, to b
over, namely, that of "mingling matters of Scotland with England m the
Treaty ;" that is, as it is farther explained, not to insert any thing derogatory
from the honour and dignity of the French King, as though he were force
the Queen of England to accept terms from his own subjects ; but this als
was got over by a special clause or article, drawn up, as it would seem, by
Sir William, with his colleague's consent. Being in Latin, and of some length,
we shall merely observe upon the drift of the article, as bearing upon the case <
the Confederates. It refers all motions on the part of the French King and
Mary towards the Confederates to their own great clemency and condescension,
upon the voluntary promises and professions of the latter to enter into all due
obedience, and in consequence of the interposition of Elizabeth to bring about
this good understanding between them.
These things being thus settled, on the 2d of July we find Sir William
writing thus to Petre :
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 1?1
" Sir,— By our seconde lettre to the Quene's Majestie you shall perceive that
things have altered here with us as the tyde. And now we will so proceed to
make an end, as there shall be no faults to be founde, but in those that made
the faults at the firste.
" If we make Peace, gett me leave to make a long journey to the Court ; for
I covett to peruse all the frontyers, and so to Carlisle, and to come home by
Hull, and stumbling upon Burky, I may chance to tarry there three or foure
da7es- " Yours assured, W. CECILL."
From many letters written from the Court to Sir William, at this time, we may
discern the estimation in which he was held there.
" All your friends here are merry, and all things as you left it. We all
desyer your sone retorne hither, where, I assure you, you shall be greatly
welcome." [From the Lord Admiral [Clynton] to Secretary Ce«7/.— Haynes, 344.]
"Her Majestie prayseth God for your helthe, and prayethe for the good
continewyance thereof, and hathe commandid so to write with her moste harty
commendacions."
" All my Lords (of the Council) commend them unto you, and pray for your
helthe : and so do I and all your frends here."— [Sir Thomas Parry to Secretary
Cecill, from the Court. — Haynes, 344.]
We do not trust these compliments beyond their proper meaning ; but they
must be allowed to indicate a very considerable confidence in Sir William's
talents and exertions when absent, and no small want of them at Court during
that absence.
On the 5th of July the Commissioners write thus to Sir William Petre:
" Sir, — Yt wear pitie to defraude you, being in expectation, consydering
our varietie of proceeding. This day our matters standeth in these termes.
The articles of our whole treaty be on both partes written on parchement,
ready to be signed and sealed, and so should have bene this night, but that the
treaty betwene the French and Scots could not be concluded, afore six of the
clock this evening— as for our parte, although we speak on our own behalfes,
we think the same shall prove very honorable for the Queenes Majestie, profit-
able for her realme, and commodious for the liberty of Scotland, which the
Scotts do so well perceave, as they doo acknowledge themselves perpetually
bounde to the Quenes Majestie for this inestimable benefit. And so we wish
172 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
you better lodging than we have ourselves. From Edinboroughe, the 5th of
July, 1560, at eight of the clock at night.
" Yours assuredly, fully tyred,
" W. Cecill, N. Wotton."
In Haynes' Collection follows a public paper, purporting to be, " La maniere
qui a este advisee pour la demolition de la ville du petit Lict, et pour le
partement des gens de guerre, estans dans i'celle, hors le royaume d'Ecosse."
The details are curious ; all to the following effect : — " Et a 1' instant que 1' une
des dictes pieces d' artillerie sera ostee de dessus les ramparts de la dicte ville,
sera aussi retiree une des pieces d' Angleterre ; puis un autre de la dicte ville, et
un d' Angleterre, &c.—
On the 6th of July, 1560, the two commissioners, Sir William Cecill and
Dr. Wotton, sent to the Queen a sort of summary or result of their labours ;
after some notice of the difficulties with which they had had to contend, they
observe :
" Nevertheless we have obteyned for [your Majestie's own causes an honor-
able end, compelling them to acknowledg your undoubted right, which they
were very hardly brought to doo in open treaty :* neither we think they wold
thereto agree, but that we bare them in hand, that we wold not only breake
uppon that pointe with all our harts, but also thereby the world shuld see
manifestly their injuriouse purposes, which in words they had excused and
covered. — As for the suerty and libertie of Scotland, we have been meanes to
obtayne all thyngs requisite, so as the Nobilitie here acknolege the realme more
bounden to your Majestic, than to their Sovereign. We have so tempered the
matter, that the honor of the French Kyng and Queen is as much considered
as may be, whereunto we were no small helpers, as we thynk the French
Ambassadors will confess, yea and thank us more for the same, than their
master's subjects. | This country shal be governed by a counsell of twelve,
taken out of the twenty-four first to be named in Parlement by the three estates :
and of the twelve, seven shal be named by the Quene, and five by the Lords of
Parlement. All things past since Marche 1558 shal be forgotten, and by
* Surely this is sufficient so prove how entirely the assumption of the arms and title so often
insisted upon was intended to impugn Elizabeth's right to the Crown, whether as legitimate by
birth, heir under Henry's will, or established on the throne by Parliament.
+ This is a remarkable passage and deserves attention.
I560-l MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 173
Parlement shal be confirmed— no Frenchman shal have any office in the realme.
The Nobilitie wold, if it were not to suspiciouse, make an accord in Parlement,
that whosoever shal take pension of France shal be accounted an enemy to their
countree— this is their'present humour, but a potion of French crownesmay chance
alter this."
The sum of their proceedings is then brought together, exhibiting, to say the
least, a very curious display of the Secretary's diplomatic talents, considering
especially with whom he had to deal. And, as far as regards the security of
England and Scotland, from the notorious designs of the Lorrain family, the
delicacy preserved towards the King and Queen of France is very curious, and
seems to have been almost entirely the act of Sir William himself.
" Amongst other things for their suerty (the Scots), we have compacted in
your Majesties treaty, first, that there shall no shipp come into Scotland with men
of warr or munition : next, that the French King and Quene shall accomplish
all his grants to the Scotts; which, if he shall doo, we see not but your
Majesty shall have long quietness with Scotland. It hath been the difficulste
matter almost in our treaty to obteyne a covenant from the French Kyng and
Quene to your Majestic to performe his promises to his subjects, for therein,
as they saye, their master's honour is more touched, than in any thyng that
ever could chance to hym : for so the world shall saye, that he is forced by your
Majesty thereto (as in truth he is), though it may not be sayd to Frenchmen :
next, the Scotts shall thereby owe all the favour which they receive from their
King and Queen to your Majesty, as in truth also they doo, though they may
not say so to the French.— Many other thyngs be accorded to the Scotts which
shall much touch the French in honour, and chiefly redound to the liberty of the
countrey. Two thyngs have been to whott (too hot) for the French to meddle
withall, and therefore they be passed over, and left as they found them. The
first is the matter of Relligion,* which is here as freely, and rather more earnestly,
* This is certainly a very curious passage in the Secretary's letter, if all the circumstances be con-
sidered, but most particularly the characters of the Commissioners. Montluc, a French Catholic
Bishop, but supposed greatly to favour the Protestants, or Calvinists, under the auspices of the
celebrated Margaret of Navarre, accused by the Dean of his Cathedral of being even secretly
married.-[See Diet. Historique, Art. \\.Montluc.} M. de Randan, belonging to the Guisian
faction ; Dr. Wotton, one of Queen Mary's Catholic Counsellors ; and Cecil, a Protestant. Under
these c.rcumstances, it might be good policy in the latter, not to make any particular stipulations
concerning Religion, having secured to the Lords of the Congregation a power of assembling in
free Parliaments, and of which they afterwards took advantage, by abolishing, after the departure
174 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. • [1«80.
s I the Secretary thynke, receaved than in England ; a hard thing now to alter
a t is planted. Z second is, the accord, betwixt your Majesty and Scotland
remayneth in the same state that it was, and being motioned by the French
Ambassador to have it dissolved, the Scott, would not accord.
"These two things, we think, will much offend the French, and how they wil
hereafter stand we know not ; but we be well contented to leave them as we found
them • and yet, if the said treaty should not remayne in force, the gpecu
points tending to keep Frenchmen out of Scotland, and such lyke, be well and
assuredly provided for. If we conclude the treaty this day we shall doo our
endeavour to hasten the dissolving of the army. I the Secretary have had some
care hereof, and have taken order both upon the sea and land for the fed
hereof.
of the French, the Popish, and establishing, as far as it could be done, the Protestant Religion.
Compensation was provided for the Bishops-and Abbots, by restoring to them their property,
securing their persons, and not even wresting from them their right of sitting in Parhament.
fSee Cook vol. ii. 3 14, 15, &c.] As for the expression, "which is here as freely, and rather
more earnestly receaved, as I the Secretary think, than in England," and which has been much
noticed, it is very intelligible to those who consider that his colleague, Dr. Wotton, was reputed a
Catholic and could not well, therefore, be expected to join in the observation, and that Cecil's
remark upon the greater earnestness, with which the Reformed Religion seemed to him to be
received in Scotland, might only refer to the more rigorous discipline, and zeal bordering upon
intemperance, which marked the character of Knox's system and conduct, comparatively with the
more liberal, and less violent measures and changes carrying on in his own country. In point of
morality and gravity of conduct and character, it is certainly very probable, that the Northern
Protestants surpassed those of the South, and so far might appear more earnest, but that the
expression implied any decided preference of the Knoxian or Calvinistic system of belief or
discipline, as approaching nearer to purity of Religion than the Reformation in England, u, we
think, deducing more from the terms than they strictly warrant, though the Secretary had certainly
a high opinion of the learning and of the zeal, when duly tempered, of many who had been exiles
at Geneva, as we shall have occasion to shew. Knox, however, had in so rude and rough a man-
ner abused the English Liturgy, in which Cecil is judged to have had no small hand, that it is
scarcely possible to conceive that he could have regarded with any very favourable eye the
(earnest, certainly, but in some respects too) rigid and severe principles of the Scottish Reformers.
Ridley was amazed at Knox's objections to the Liturgy, though he adds in the letter in which he
complains of it to Grindal, " surely Mr. Knox is, in my mind, a man of much good learning and
of earnest zeal." It might be conjectured, without much want of charity, that the Article (Art. 5.)
for the satisfaction and security of the Bishops and Abbots was suggested by Montluc, who is
said to have had a son of his own, and might, therefore, feel the more for the dispossessed
Scottish Dignitaries, most of whom, we are very gravely told, had also families to provide for.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 175
"From the Campe before Leth, the 6th of July, 1560, your Majesty's most
humble and obedient subjects and servants, W. CECILL, N. WOTTON."
In a letter of the same date to Sir William Petre, relative to a great practiser,
George Paris, whom the Secretary describes as a man "entertayned in houshold
with the old Queen, as an instrument to trouble Ireland," but who was now
offering his services to the Queen of England for the very contrary purposes.
Sir William concludes his letter, " God send us now peace of mind, by unitie
of good will, and uniformyte in honouring of God."
The peace was proclaimed on the 7th of July. The Secretary writes to the
Queen : "It seemeth suerly very welcom to all parts." If the French had
stood out longer at Leith, " it shuld," he says, " have been the occasion of the
shedding of a greate deal of blood, which is now well saved."* Then follows
"the substance of the accord," as he calls it, which we shall endeavour to abridge
as well as we can, as it is necessary to shew what was the original wish and
purpose of this great Minister with regard to the three kingdoms of England,
Scotland, and France, had they continued to stand in the same relative situation
towards each other as at this time.
The treaty of Casteau in Cambresey reduced to its former strength. The
French army to be withdrawn, excepting 120 ; to be stationed, sixty " in the
Isle here," and sixty in Dunbar, whose new fortification to be demolished, as
well as the town of Leith.
All hostile preparations to cease, and no troops or " warly apparel" to be
transported from England or Ireland to France, or from France to England,
Scotland, or Ireland.
Aymouth to be more dismantled before the English army return to
Berwick.
Her Majestie's undoubted right to the Crown of England and Ireland is
fully confessed and acknowledged, and no other person to use the arms, &c. ;
and any thing done to the contrary, in France or Scotland, to be redressed.
The demand of Calais and 500,000 crowns, referred to a new treaty, which
if not concluded in three months, King Philip to settle it in a twelvemonth. ")'
* " In this manner," says the author of the Life of Knox, " terminated the civil war which
attended the Scottish Reformation, after it had continued for twelve months, with less rancour
and bloodshed than have distinguished any other contest of a similar kind." — i. 321.
t This was probably, with much prudence, deferred, as we may judge from the following
passage in a letter from the Duke of Norfolk to Sir William, after the return of the latter to the
176 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
" Next this," as the letter states, " followeth the covenant to your Majestie,
for observing the Treaty now accorded betwixt the French and the Scotts;
which article was as hardly obtayned as any ; and next to yt the recognition of
your Majestie's right to the Crowne."
This deserves attention, as plainly evincing the evil disposition prevailing
against the Queen at the Court of France.
This is the sum of the Treaty, as affecting England and France ; next follows
the agreement as respecting Scotland ; the principal articles of which, as addi-
tional to the preceding Treaty respecting the removal of the French forces,
consist in giving as much power as possible to the Parliamentary assembly of
the three Estates, and to the exclusion of foreigners from the ordinary offices of
the realm.
On the 15th of July, 1560, the Secretary, in an address to the Lords of the
Council, uses the following odd, but probably true remark : " Here is good-will
of all Pacts, the French to be gone, we to carry them, and the Scotts to curse
them hence, so as by Wednesdaye at night, we men of Peace, trust to lodge at
Haddington."
Dr. Cook, in his History of the Reformation in Scotland, thus speaks of the
Treaty as it regarded England, " The glory and security of Elizabeth were thus
eminently promoted. — She procured by the Treaty the abjuration of claims,
which, from the commencement of her reign, had been to her the source of
much disquietude, which she knew were esteemed valid by a great part of her
subjects, and which, at a future period, might have occasioned more trouble and
hazard than could now ever arise from them, after having been solemnly
renounced by the Princess, who alone would maintain them. She also delivered
her kingdom from the imminent danger of invasion ; with which, in every
season of difficulty, it would have been assailed, had the French retained their
footing in Scotland ; while by her generous and magnanimous conduct to the
Court. " Nowe you are arrived att the Court I dowght not but that you shall find alteration of
your last letter unto me. Blind men can schewes (discern) no colours ; perchans they that make
most of their payntyd schathe, wyll never doo such sarvys unto this realme, as you have done in
concludyng thys Peace. I dare in argument stand with them all, that the Quene's Majesty could
could not have bought this agreement too dearly. Perchans sum will saye, with diffaryng we
might have had Calys : but I will rather thynke, that we might have spede lyke the Dog in
JEsop's Fables, whiche having a bone in his mouth and seying the shadow thereoff in the water,
gaped to have fetchet it, and so lost bothe."— Hayncs, 360.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 177
Scottish Lords, she gained their affections, and rendered them partial to an
alliance with England; thus establishing over their minds, and, through them,
over the Government of Scotland, a more powerful influence than had been at
any time possessed by its own Sovereign." — Vol. ii. 305. Speaking generally
of the Treaty, as regarding Scotland, he says, " The principal articles of the
Treaty evince the anxiety with which Elizabeth had watched over the interests
of the Lords ; the care with which she had provided against their being harassed
for their preceding conduct, and the wisdom with which she secured the future
independence of their country."*
This is indeed confirmed by the twelve articles of the Treaty which follow,
and which amply provide for the due administration of the Government by the
Queen and three estates, all foreign armies being withdrawn. There is a great
display of loyalty, but with due regard to the rights of the people, and security
of the Protestant Church of Scotland. It was after the conclusion of this Peace,
and upon the subsequent meeting of Parliament in August, that the Earls of
Morton and Glencairn, with Maitland of Lethington, were deputed to England,
to thank Elizabeth, and request that she would consent to unite herself in mar-
riage with the Earl of Arran, heir presumptive to the throne, on the demise of
Mary, without children. And as the Parliamentary order was subscribed by
the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, four bishops, and several of the Popish clergy,
it has been reasonably regarded, not as designed to supplant Mary, but to do
all they could to establish a firm alliance with England. Elizabeth declined
the match, but in terms very complimentary to Arran, and the Scotch nation
at large.
The Treaty of Edinburgh, together with the proceedings of the subsequent
Parliament, held in virtue of that Treaty, and in which the Protestant Confession
of Faith received a sanction, and the rites of the Popish religion were abolished
by a national assembly, the largest in point of numbers ever known ; consisting
of the Nobility, Barons, and Commissioners of Boroughs ; may be regarded as a
decided triumph on the part of the Protestants. The Treaty itself being, as a
learned writer justly calls it, the Charter of their Liberty. Still, we must
confess, the proceedings were very hasty with regard to Mary, whose ratifica-
tion of the Treaty was wanting, and whose prerogative, notwithstanding all the
professions of loyalty in the public instruments, was nearly reduced to nothing.
» See the Edinburgh Review, of McCrie'sLife of Knox, No. XXXIX. pp. 16, 17.
VOL. II. 2 A
178 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
Those who objected to the validity of this Parliament, as legally or constitu-
tionally assembled, had much reason on their side, and it would seem, that the
only excuse to be made was, that the emergency was a very extraordinary one,
and the times revolutionary ; and the Queen abiding in a foreign country, under
foreign influence, notoriously inimical to the liberties of Scotland, civil and
religious. As to the forgery* of which Lethington and Cecil stand accused by
Chalmers, in regard to the Scotch accord, it is a controversy depending so
much on negative and circumstantial evidence, that we cannot pretend to enter
into it, further than to say, that Cecil, in his letters, seems to shew, that it was
all negotiated between him and the French Commissioners, without the assist-
ance of Lethington, or others of the Nobility. — See Chalmers, vol. i. 34.
vol. ii. 414.
From the following note of Lord Burghley's, we find that he returned
to Greenwich on the 28th of July, having been gratefully and honourably
escorted to Berwick, together with his colleague, Dr. Wotton, by many
of the Lords of the Congregation, a circumstance he passes over. "July 28.
Sir William Cecill came to Greenwich from Scotland, so as he was absent
sixty-three dayes, having had \l. per diem, in toto 252/. and for postage
with twenty-two horses from London to Edinburghe, and from thence back
to London, 117/."
That Sir William performed these services with no very prudent regard to
his own pocket, we may conclude from the following passage, in a letter
addressed to him by the Lord Treasurer Winchester, after his return to Court,
August 24, 1560. " In the mean tyme all good Councellors shall have labor and
dolor without reward ; whereyn your part is most of all mens ; for your charge
and paynes be farre above all oder mens, and your thanks and rewards least,
and worse considered ; and specially, for that you spend holy of your self,
without your ordinary fee, land, patent, gift, or ony thing : which must nedes
discomfort you. And yett when your Counsell is most for her Majesties honor
and profitt, the same hath got hinderaunce by her weke creditt of you, and by
* So Chalmers calls it; one of his proofs is, that when Dr. Wotton died, in 1566, Cecil was
restless till he obtained possession of the papers of his coadjutor, in order to see what account
Dr. Wotton had given of the supposititious accord with the Scotch nobles ; and he refers to
Strype's Annals, iii. 208. (301. Oxford Edition), but Strype's account is very different. I think,
in fact, the honour of the French King and Queen, as far as it was considered, was the work of
Cecil, against the will of the Nobility. — See before p. 45.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 179
back councells ; and so long as that manner shall coutynew, it must needs be
dangerous servic and unthankful!."
This passage alone may serve to shew, how little responsible Sir William was
for all the measures of Elizabeth — how much he was liable to be thwarted by
" back councells," and a temporary or casual want of confidence on the part of
the Queen.
We are the more disposed to notice this, in consequence of two letters, which,
in Haynes's Collection, immediately follow that of the Lord Treasurer. The first
is from Lord Robert Dudley (the famous Earl of Leicester) to Sir William Cecil;
the second from Mr. Lever from Coventry, to the two Secretaries of State, Sir
Francis Knollys and Sir William Cecil, communicating the suspicions and
rumours afloat, ".of the death of her, which was the wife of my Lord Robert
Dudlei."*
* It was in the course of this year, that an occurrence took place, to which every body's
attention was, not long ago, forcibly attracted, by its being made the subject of one of those
extraordinary novels which, partaking almost equally of history and fiction, have, with a rapidity
the most surprising, filled the shelves of almost every private gentleman's library, and are never
likely to be allowed hereafter to pass into oblivion; it is sufficient to mention the name of Sir
Walter Scott. Those who are well read in the pages of Kenilworth, will conclude that we refer
to the tragical death of the wife of Leicester, at Cumner, in Berkshire, the particulars of which
will, in all likelihood, never now be better known upon earth, than as they are hinted at, in that
interesting performance ; and of which it is as much as we can be expected to say, in such a work
as the present, it may all be true. For a letter is certainly extant, written by a grave and
reverend person, to Sir Francis Knollys and Sir William Cecil, as joint Secretaries of State,
mentioning the foul rumours that were afloat upon the subject ; and rather urging an
inquiry. It is to be found in Haynes's Selection of the Burghley Papers. It would be
certainly desirable, to ascertain what steps were taken in consequence of such a letter, but
here we are in the dark. Probably, direct evidence of violence, on the parts of Foster and
Varney, could not be produced ; and without the means of invalidating their testimony, as to the
accidental death of the Countess, it might have been useless and very unsatisfactory to proceed ;
but since Sir William Cecil's name appears to be implicated in it, it may behove us to state our
sentiments ; and to say, that, in all probability, he believed the story of her untimely end, or at least,
so far supposed it might be true, as to regard it as a stigma, unremoved, bearing hard upon the
character and credit of his great rival ; for he enumerates it among the objections to the Queen's
making him her husband, that "he stood infamed by the death of his wife." In the Burghley
Papers, there is, it must be confessed, immediately before the letter of Lever, and apparently
placed so as to seem to intervene somewhere between the 24th of August and 17th of September,
a letter to Cecil, from the Lord Robert Dudley, betokening no small agitation of mind, and an
allusion to some charges against him, which very possibly refer to the very case in question ; it
is as follows : without date —
180 MEMOIRS OF LORD BU11GHLEY. [1560.
Leicester's own letter is, as far as possible, unintelligible ; probably so written
on purpose. The second letter urges inquiry. It is probable, that upon this
occasion, " back councells" interposed, to save the delinquent. The real story
still remains unexplored, though if the walls of Cumner could speak, there may,
almost now, be enough remaining of them, to bear testimony to the real circum-
stances of the catastrophe, which is likely to give importance to the spot, to the
end of time. It would, however, seem that something passed at this time,
implicating both Leicester and the Queen, though for want of dates, it is not
easy to connect it with the letter. We refer to the Declaration, Confession,
and Submission of Arthur Gunter, to be seen in Haynes, 364, 365.
In the course of this year, considerable progress was made in the advance-
ment of Protestantism, or restoration of the Church to the state it was in at the
demise of Edward; the new Bishops were all men of distinguished learning;
and, as such, were wisely called upon, in the season of Lent, to preach the
sermons at Paul's Cross, as well as at Court, " who did commonly," as Strype
says, " make it their business in their sermons, to prove and evince the present
proceedings in Religion ; and, as occasion served, to lay open the errors and
corruptions of that religion and worship, that was now lately rejected." And
of the effect of these sermons, he observes, that being " so well and learnedly
performed, at which assembled such vast confluences of auditors, countenanced
" To myne assured Sir William Cecill, Knight,
" Princypall Secretary to her Majesty.
" Sir, — I thank you much for your being hear : and the great frendshipp you have shewyd
towards me, I shall not forgett. I am veary loth to wysh you hear again, but I wodd be very
gladd to be with you thear. I pray you lett me hear from you, what you think best for me to
doe, if you dowbt, I pray you ask the questyon, for the soner you can advyse me thether, the
more I shall thank you. I am sorry so sodden a chaunce shuld brede me so great a chandge, for
methinks I am hear all this while, as it were in a Dreame, and to farr, to farre, from the place, I
am bound to be ; whear, mythinkes, also, this long idle Tyme, can not excuse me, for the Dewty
I have to discharge ellswhear. I pray you help him who seues to be at Liberty, owt of so great
Bondage. Forgett me not, though you see me not, and I will remember you, and fayll ye not,
and so wysh you well to doe. In hast this Morning. I beseech you Sir forgett not to offer up
the humble Sacrafyce you promysed me.
" Your veary assured,
" R. DUDLEY."
It is difficult to say what this letter can mean ; it is without date, as was before intimated,
but immediately preceding the letter of Lever, in Haynes's Collection, 361, 2. — See on this,
Lingard, 194, 195,199.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 181
also by the presence of the Queen and Nobility, reconciled great respect to the
new religion (as it was called) ; and the persons of this clergy, newly appearing
out of their banishments and recesses, shining with clear consciences, and holy
zeal for the truth and Gospel." In one of these sermons Jewel, afterwards
Bishop of Salisbury, staked the whole credit of his theological learning, on
the most positive assertions, that no authority was to be found in the Holy
Scriptures, in the Fathers, or in the decrees of ancient Councils, for some of
the leading tenets, and most imposing practices of the Romish Church;*
such as private masses ; communion in one kind only ; prayers in an unknown
tongue; transubstantiation, and the pretended universal authority of the Bishop
of Rome. He was answered in letters by Dr. Cole, and Jewel published a
reply ; the first were circulated only among the Doctor's own party ; the latter
appeared openly, and in print. Others engaged in the dispute, as may be seen
in Strype's Annals of the Reformation ; and indeed it was prolonged much
beyond the period of which we are writing, being principally the happy occa-
sion, as we may conclude, of the admirable Apology for the Church of England,
by the learned Bishop, of which we shall have more to say hereafter.
It was natural to think, that so many Bishops could not be deprived, as
turned out to be the case, and others in so short a time elected, confirmed, and
consecrated, without raising questions as to the validity of the several forms
* Among the practices now judged to be almost peculiar to the Church of Rome, we may
reckon their weekly fasts, or abstinence from meats, and their strict observance, particularly in
this respect, of the season of Lent ; but at the period of the Reformation, this does not seem to
have been regarded as any corruption of religion, or one at all deserving to be formally abrogated
or done away ; and indeed, if kept clear from superstition, and considered as an act of
voluntary self-denial and humiliation, no serious Christian would venture to dispute its propriety;
as it is clear from Lord Burghley's Houshold-book, under the last reign, that a fish-diet was
regularly provided for Fridays and Saturdays, (vol. i. 688.) which has been regarded by some,
as one proof of his conformity. It may be well to shew, that the Lent Season was strictly,
though not superstitiously observed, after Elizabeth's accession, a letter being extant from the
Secretary himself to Archbishop Parker, to procure a dispensation for the son of Lord North, in
which he states, " That the bearer, Sir Roger North, son and heir to the Lord North, being to
him (the Secretary) well known, had, in consideration of his ill estate of health, and the danger
that might follow, if he should be restrained to eating of fish, prayed him to be means to his
Grace to dispense with him herein ; he doubted not but his Grace should of all others under-
stand, how requisite it was for the preservation of his health, that he should be dispensed
withal." The butchers, indeed, by proclamation, were forbidden to kill meat in Lent, under a
heavy penalty. — See more upon this hereafter.
182 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
used, in an emergency of such a nature. We should be going much out of
our way, to enter far into this part of the history of the Reformed Church ; but as
it appears to have occasioned some difficulty to the Secretary as well as the new
Archbishop ; and many strange stories were afterward broached by the Papists,
beginning with the famous charge against the Archbishop himself, of having
received his consecration at a common Inn or Tavern, and from the hands of such
as were no Catholic Bishops; we must refer our readers, for a true account of
all these transactions, to the Life of that great Prelate by Strype, b. ii. ch. 1.
only observing, that it was a great object with the opposers of the Reformation,
to invalidate the consecration of the Metropolitan, that thereby his subsequent
consecration of other Bishops, might appear to be invalid also. The motive being
thus sifted and understood, may well account for the strange " fable," as it has
been justly called, of the " Nag's head," the sign of the Inn where the new
Protestant Bishops were said to have gone through the farce of a mutual,
informal, and in fact, illegal consecration, the one of the other. Many new
Bishops being, however, appointed, the Primate lost no time in endeavouring to
provide for the due supply of void churches, by the nomination and appoint-
ment of proper ministers. The first care seems to have been, to remove
improper ministers ; particularly as I find it expressed, " the old oft-revolted
priests, that complied under all the late revolutions of religion ;"* we have
already shewn, from Camden, that many Popish priests took the oath of supre-
macy, in order that by retaining their benefices, they might exclude the
Protestants. These, therefore, were in all reason judged fit to be deposed.
The next care, of course, was to place the ministry itself generally upon a more
respectable footing ; for which end, the Archbishop himself drew up a writing,
entitled, " An Order for serving the Cures now destitute," in which, to shew the
attention paid by the Secretary to all matters of public importance, whether
* This was more fully expressed, in the Article relating to them, in a paper purporting to be
Orders for the Clergy, and regulation of the Church.
" That all priests made to say Mass afore it was abolished in King Edward's days, which
then first had said Mass ; and secondarily after it was then abolished, renouncing the Mass and
Papistry, did profess and practice the Christian ministry ; and thirdly, in Queen Mary's time
revolted again unto Papistry ; and fourthly, now in Queen Elizabeth's time, be returned again
into the ministry; that therefore now they cease from any ministry of the word and sacraments,
until further examination and order be taken, with them and others, according to God's word."
This Article is besides much enlarged upon by entering further into particulars, in the paragraph
immediately following.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 183
relating to the Church or the State, one rule or order is said to have been
specially introduced, or added by Cecil, contrary to the opinion of Bishop Grindal ;
the purport of the rule was as follows : " The said principal incumbent, or
pastor in course, to resort in circuit to every his peculiars, as well to preach the
word, and to minister the holy communion, as to marry, and baptize the
children born since his last being there ; and the people to be taught by an
homily, that they need not scruple for the delay of baptism, if the children
departed before they be presented to the minister : considering, that in the
primitive Church, the fathers used but two principal feasts, Easter and Pente-
cost, to admit children to the holy Font." The force of Grindal's. objection
seems to have been, that it might tend to revive one of the quarrels in the
Cornish rebellion, under King Edward : viz., " that their children died without
baptism."
No man, one would think, could better remember the Cornish rebellion
under Edward, than Cecil ; and it might more reasonably be supposed, that he
wanted such an Homily to be prepared, as might prevent, rather than excite,
similar quarrels or complaints ; and to shew that his object was to pacify the
feelings, and quiet the fears of the people, and yet provide for all their reason-
able anxieties, it was added, " yet the minister or pastor was not forbid, if he
might conveniently, to minister the sacrament of baptism on a week-day, being
required thereunto, and that without pact or covenant of reward, but of charity
and zeal ; which he ought to bear to the reasonable request of his people : and
they of their charitable consideration, in respect of time, weather, or distance
of place, not to molest the said pastor more than need."
There seems then to be not only much good sense shewn in this Article, but
for the times, a more correct judgment upon the point expressed, than could
reasonably have been expected ; in the disputes upon the subject of the baptism
of infants in old time, particularly among the Pelagians and Augustinians, the
former, by their denial of original sin, having greatly depreciated the value and
importance of Christian baptism ; the latter had been drawn so far into the
contest as to maintain, that infants born in original sin, as all infants were,
would infallibly incur the punishment and damnation of the wicked, if not
baptized ; the horror of this alternative had induced some to invent a middle
state for unbaptized infants, where, in losing heaven they might yet escape the
torments of hell. Still the other opinion prevailing generally in the Latin
Church, led to the error, in order to quiet the fears of alarmed and anxious
184 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
parents, of admitting lay persons to administer the sacrament of baptism ; which
actually continued, according to the rubric, an error of our own Church, till
the year 1575,* when Grindal himself being Archbishop, a decree was made
that in cases even of private baptism, however urgent the occasion, the cere-
mony must be performed by a lawfully ordained minister. The Article therefore
introduced by Cecil fifteen years previous to the decree of Convocation, though
objected to by Grindal at the time, seems exactly consonant to the proper bear-
ings of the case : it implies the necessity for an ordained minister, but as such
may not always be at hand, it holds out comfort to every anxious parent not
to despair of God's mercy towards the infant, should the rite by inevitable
necessity be unperformed at the time of the child's death ; it affords every rea-
sonable opportunity for calling in a minister, in any urgent case, but not to the
indulgence of any unreasonable or superstitious apprehensions, that might sub-
ject the minister called upon to any extraordinary difficulties or inconveniences,
by an evident want of time, stress of weather, or distance of place; circumstances
not likely to be duly considered by persons in a state of desperate alarm, though
full of hazard, perhaps, to any minister exposed to such hindrances or obstruc-
tions; and herein it may be farther remarked, the Secretary opposes Knox, who
it seems, from a correspondence between Ridley and Grindal in Mary's reign,
objected to private baptism under any circumstances. " What would he," says
Ridley, "in that case should be done? peradventure he will say, it is better
than to let them die without baptism." — Strypes Grindal, 28, 29. The case in
point, is one, as applicable to the present state of the Church, as it could be in
the days of Elizabeth. The Secretary ought therefore to have his due share of
praise, for so wholesome an ecclesiastical regulation, notwithstanding Bishop
Grindal, his great friend's " non probo," to be seen to this day ; but which
Grindal himself, by his actions, seems afterwards to have retracted ; for by re-
straining lay persons from performing the ceremony (1675), and ministers not
being always within call, in periculo mortis, parents and others must be some-
times obliged, and therefore should always stand prepared to leave their children,
dying unbaptized through inevitable necessity, to the mercies of God.
In the course of this year the following extraordinary proposals are said
to have been sent to the Queen from Pope Pius IV., through his nuncio, Vincentio
* " Item, That private baptism in necessity, as in peril of death, be administered either by
the curate, deacon, or reader, or some other grave and sober man, if the time will suffer." — Inter-
pretation of the Queen's Injunctions, 1560.
1560.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 185
-
Parpalio, to confirm the English Liturgy, allow the partaking of the Sacrament
in both kinds, and disannul the sentence against her mother's marriage, if
she would, on the part of her subjects as well as herself, acknowledge the
authority of the Roman see ; but the Queen would not allow this nuncio,
Parpalio, to come into her dominions, nor yet a second, the Abbot Martinegues,*
who was supported and encouraged by the King of France and some of her
allies ; nor would she at all comply with their united request to her to send a
minister to the council of Trent. f The Pope, failing in all these points, J sent Friars
and Jesuits to sow dissension in England, armed with dispensations for every
character they might find it necessary to assume, or every doctrine they might
profess, however adverse to the church of Rome. The council of Trent even
sent directions to them to sow divisions wherever they could ; where Lutheranism
should be found to prevail, to preach Calvinism ; where Calvinism, Lutheranism,
or any other doctrine, not omitting even the wild tenets of the Anabaptists,
sooner than not do all that could be done to confound the Protestants. §
A communication it seems, at this time, was supposed to be going forward
between Calvin and the new Archbishop,|| for a straiter union among the
* " Martinengo, a Nuncio of the Pope's, came to Brussells, requesting liberty to come into the
realm, but it was denied." — Lord Eurghley's Notes, May 1561. See also Collier, ii. 474.
f Pius IV., like all other Popes, was averse from calling any more general councils, but was com-
pelled at last, in order to prevent a more mortifying expedient, threatened by France in particular,
namely, that of summoning national councils. The Protestants of France were desirous of having
such a council, in which they were encouraged and aided by the celebrated Montluc, Bishop of
Valence, of whom we have already had so much to say. This led to the re-opening (for so it
seemed to be) of the council of Trent, fixed for Easter-day, 1561, and at which all the Protes-
tant as well as Catholic Princes and towns in Europe were invited to assibt. This the former
generally refused, while Elizabeth's example, of not even admitting the Nuncio to enter her
kingdom, was followed by the King of Denmark.
J Among the Cottonian MSS., Titus, C. 10, the following memorandum occurs in a journal
of the year 1560 : — " Papa petiit consensum Hispani ut Reginam excommunicaret."
^ Strype's Life of Parker, i. 341. Annals, i. 141.
(1 Calvin had, in truth, written to the Primate, strongly urging a stricter union among Pro-
testants, rejoicing in the accession of Elizabeth, a princess likely to be instrumental in propagating
the true faith of Jesus Christ, by restoring the Gospel, and expelling idolatry, with the Bishop of
Rome's usurped power, and recommending it to him to advise her Majesty to summon a general
assembly of all the Protestant clergy, and that a set form and method of public service and
church government might.be agreed upon and established. This letter was laid before the
Queen and Council by the Archbishop, and his Grace was desired to thank Calvin for it, and to
express a general approbation of his proposals, only observing to him, that as to church govern-
VOL. II. 2 B
186 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1560.
Reformed, which gave no small alarm to the Pope and to his whole college
of Cardinals.
In this year died the great Reformer, Melancthon, in his sixty-third year, and
was buried at Wittemberg ; his epitaph may be seen in Strype. No man had
been more solicited to come into England, in the reigns of Henry and Edward, as
we have shewn in our first volume ; his learning and moderation have secured to
him, in all times, the respect, not of friends only, but of adversaries ; and
though, upon some points, he is supposed to have yielded too much in the course
of the great struggle on foot, there is every reason to attribute it more to
the extreme amiableness of his disposition than any servile timidity or want
of zeal.
The Queen this year received a visit from the brother of the King of Sweden,
sent to solicit the hand of her Majesty for the Swedish monarch ; though not a
successful suitor, he was received and entertained with all due distinction.
merit, they had resolved to retain episcopacy, not on the model of the church of Rome, or with
the Romish ceremonies, but according to the primitive and purer times. Before the proposals of
Calvin, however, could be farther acted upon, that eminent Reformer died ; but there are proofs
enough extant, that such an episcopacy as the English church had in view, would not have been
objectionable to the heads of the Helvetian church at this time. Melancthon, it may be added,
who died this year, was, by his own acknowledgment, so friendly to episcopacy, as to be known to
have declared, that if the German Bishops would but have received the Augustan Confession, and
allowed the pure doctrine of the Gospel to be publicly taught, their power and the administration
of their dioceses should have been continued, in which Luther also is said to have agreed. — See
Strype's Annals, vol. i. 352, and his Life of Parker, b. ii. c. 2, 1560, where may be seen a curious
account of some former proposals of Calvin having been intercepted and suppressed by Gardiner
and Boner, though not discovered till about the sixth year of Elizabeth's reign, when the Queen
herself expressed her concern that the discovery had not taken place sooner, before her council ;
and, as it is added, " in the presence of her great friends, Sir Henry Sidney and SIR WILLIAM
CECIL."
CHAP. Hi.
1561.
Third year of Queen Elizabeth's
'° «*
„/
arrival in '
«,,V4 fi * f •««<«»/. »» to rrt.™
~
188 MEMOIRS OF LOED BURGHLEY. [1561.
secure the liberty of Scotland, the Protestant Religion, and amity with England,
as the consequence of both. If this might be looked to, it was to be regarded
as rather a fortunate event to Scotland, and especially to the ' Congregationists,'
by lessening the power of the Princes of Lorrain ; but as things turned out, it
may rather be regarded as the beginning of all the troubles to. which Mary was
doomed, for the remainder of her short but most wearisome life, and, for the
same period, the source of constant uneasiness to Elizabeth, and of embarrass-
ment to her Counsellors.
It is impossible then to enter upon this portion of the Life of Lord Burghley
(then Mr. Secretary Cecil), without reflecting on the hazard every historian runs,
even to this day, of taking a view of things, which others will conceive to be
founded on misrepresentation, if not on the grossest partiality; a partiality,
besides, likely to offend the moral feelings and sensibilities of mankind, as bear-
ing hard upon ^.persecuted Princess (for so Mary will always be thought) and an
highly accomplished female. The world will perhaps never be entirely satisfied
with regard to the conduct and character of these two extraordinary women
and rival sovereigns ; and surely it must be granted, that no two human beings
were ever thrown, by circumstances, into a more perplexing state of opposition
to each other, both personal and political. Mary's title to the crown of England,
to many, appeared much clearer, as a claim of inheritance, than Elizabeth's.
Every advantage, therefore, that the former possessed above the latter, must not
only have been an object of female jealousy and envy, but of political alarm.
Even her personal attractions, and comparative youth, might obtain for Mary,
friends and supporters, which her rival might fail to conciliate ; while Elizabeth
had the mortification of constantly feeling, that with abundance of regal quali-
ties of the first stamp, and some personal accomplishments, of which she was
judged to be but too vain,* she might occasionally sink upon comparison.
The difference of religion alone must, to bot/i, have been a continual source of
distrust and suspicion, pointing at all times to a division in their respective
kingdoms, which could not fail to give some advantage to each, in the countries
* If the accounts given of her, hy those who knew her well in her earliest years, be true, it
would be difficult to say, at what period this personal vanity first began to display itself. The
reader may consult the evidences adduced by Mr. Turner, in his recent history, of her great sim-
plicity and moderation in dress, during the reigns of her father and brother ; and till, indeed, she
was forced, as it were, to follow the more showy example of her sister Mary.— See Modern Hist,
of England, Part II. book ii. ch. xvii.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 189
where they naturally bore no rule ; and, in either case, the friends of the one
could not but be regarded as, comparatively, the enemies of the other. Mary's
Catholic friends in England, for instance, the enemies of Elizabeth, and Eli-
zabeth's Protestant friends in Scotland, the enemies of Mary. While each
might be expected to be continually endeavouring to gain adherents in the
kingdom of the other,* not, indeed, by open dealing always, but more fre-
quently perhaps by secret and hidden interposition, for that was indisputably
the character of the age ; so much, and so generally, that perhaps it might
almost be regarded as an established maxim of the leading states of Europe,
during the whole of the sixteenth century, that without some covert intrigue, to
counteract or frustrate the hidden stratagems of others, there could be no hopes
of safety.
Writers have dwelt largely on the personal rivalry of these two exalted
females ; a competition which, as we have shewn, in a great variety of instances,
could not fail to give the advantage to Mary ; while, in the political rivalry, there
might certainly at all times be found much to extenuate the faults of Elizabeth.
In confining our views chiefly to the part which Lord Burghley had to sustain
in this complicated tragedy (for a tragedy it surely was from the beginning to
the end), it will be manifestly our business to dwell much more upon the circum-
stances of their political, than of their personal, rivalry ;•)• a topic less interesting
perhaps to the generality of readers, but certainly far more important, as
affording us the best clue to arrive at the real truth of things. For the more the
question can be reduced to a mere question of politics, the more insignificant
will their personal rivalry appear ; and it must be granted, at all events, that
they were BOTH great dissemblers. It was impossible they could love each
* " The Protestant party of Scotland," says Miss Aikin, " was powerfully protected by Eliza-
beth; the Catholic party in England was secretly incited by Mary: and it became scarcely less
the care and occupation of each to disturb the administration of her rival, than to fix her own
on a solid basis." — i. 337. We must, however, observe, that the disturbance on Elizabeth's side
was in favour of the liberties of mankind ; while Mary's was to the continuance of their thraldom
and subjugation, by the Popish hierarchy.
t " I am persuaded," says Dr. McCrie, in his Life of Knox, speaking of Elizabeth, " that she was
always more jealous of Mary as a competitor for the crown, than as a rival in personal charms."
Vol. i. 288, second edition. " We must not wonder," says Rapin, " that Elizabeth had always
an eye upon the Queen of Scots as upon a very dangerous rival." — See in the original the
occasion of this remark.
19o MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
other, or be to each other the " dear sisters" they continually and mutually pro-
fessed to be.*
Knowing the catastrophe of this sad rivalry, (and who is there so ignorant as
not to know it, with all its dismal circumstances ?) it is natural enough to
conclude, that the life and crown of the Scottish Queen were much more in the
power of Elizabeth, than the life and crown of Elizabeth in the power of Mary ;
but to judge fairly of the competition, as a point of history, it is we think almost
capable of proof, that had Elizabeth been, for ever so short a period, left
exposed by her Ministers to the malice, resentment, and powerful exertions of
Mary's friends and.tidherents, the life and crown of the English Sovereign would
have been in much the greatest jeopardy of the two ; and that nothing could
have preserved the latter from the machinations and artful designs of Mary's
supporters, but the determined loyalty and fidelity of a large majority of her
own subjects, and a vigilance on the part of her Ministers, the most unremitted
and unwearied that could be conceived.
In the judgment to be formed of this most singular period of history, it has
* The following extract from Southey's Book of tlie Church, a passage strangely misrepresented
by Dr. Milner, expresses exactly what we ourselves conceive to be a most just view of the very
peculiar circumstances in which these two sovereigns were placed : —
" Two persons so circumstanced with regard to each other as the Queens of England and
Scotland, must have been mortal enemies, unless they had been women of saintly piety and virtue-
Both were endowed witli extraordinary talents ; and in the natural dispositions of both, it is
probable that the better qualities greatly preponderated. But they were so situated, that it was
scarcely possible for them to think, or act, justly towards each other." — Vol. ii. 274. They were
always each others " dear sisters " in the whole course of their correspondence. Mary paid many
fulsome compliments to Elizabeth, in which it is utterly impossible she should have been sincere.
But royal letters are, we are sorry to say, the greatest burlesque possible upon the moral dealings
of mankind. Henry II. of France, who permitted his son, the Dauphin, and Mary Queen of
Scots, to assume the English titles and arms, in direct defiance of Elizabeth's claims to the throne,
and who supplicated the Pope to declare Mary to be Queen of England to the dispossession of
Elizabeth, could have the duplicity to say and profess to the latter, through Calvacanti, on her
accession to the Crown, " Ayant perpetuellement desire de veoir la dicte Dame parvenue au lieu et
grandeur ou il la veoyt aujourd'huy constituee." — We must not look for true history in such re-
cords ; we must dive deeper. Miss Aikin, in her Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, has
very justly observed, " Neither of the Queens was a novice in the art of dissimulation, and as
often as it suited the interest or caprice of the moment, each would lavish upon the other,
without scruple, every demonstration of amity, every pledge of affection ; but jealousy, suspicion,
and hatred dwelt irremoveably in the inmost recesses of their hearts."
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 191
certainly been the too common practice to fix the whole attention on those
circumstances of the case, which are more likely to be felt than considered ; and
which so naturally and immediately excite commiseration for the one party, as
to involve the other in unqualified contempt and abhorrence. It is not going
beyond the truth perhaps to assert, that every body is prepared to hate Elizabeth
before he enters far into the history (even the most unprejudiced) of Mary
Queen of Scots !
And yet, it cannot be denied, that both Queens had their faults — probably
great faults — such faults indeed as no difference of times, or alteration of
manners, can wholly excuse ; for who can change the nature of malice, envy,
jealousy, vanity, pride, hypocrisy, profligacy, or incontinency ? And it remains
a question to this day, as almost every body must know, How far such great
faults and defects were justly attributable or not to these very celebrated
personages ? It was a saying of Mary of Scots herself, " The best of women are
but women at the best."
True it is, that though these great failings and weaknesses cannot be
essentially different at different times, yet the general demoralization of any
particular period must, in some degree, be allowed to extenuate the faults of
individuals.* It was undoubtedly an age of relaxed morals ; of dissimulation
and perfidy exceeding all belief; and it would be almost absurd to expect
that what were the common vices of the times, should not find a readier
admission into the breasts of Princes in those days, than at any more advanced
period of civilization, refinement of manners, and heart-controlling religious
principles.
This is not said in excuse of either of the Sovereigns, but to shew, that the
struggle of politics was heightened, to those who had any thing to do with the
affairs of state, by all that could be added to their complexity, through the
prevalence of such vices, and that these really were times, in which, with a view
to the security of opposite parties, there was scarcely a possibility of acting
safely, within the strict lines of probity and fair dealing. Nor should it be
forgotten, that there was another Queen in existence all the while, in whom (if
all that has been very credibly related of her be strictly true) might be found,
not one or two only of the faults and blemishes, severally attributed to Mary
* " There is nothing so certain, as that morality varies with times and places ; and that to
censure conduct without reference to the age and nation of the individual, is substantial injustice."
— Book of the Boudoir, by Lady Morgan, 1829.
192 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
and Elizabeth, but perhaps all that ever were attributed to either of them. See
as to Catherine de Medicis, Bayle, and varicus other writers.
It has been an imputation cast on Lord Burghley, and too easily credited,
that he acted hostilely towards Mary, even from her very birth ; so as to betray
occasionally that want of feeling, which, considering her great misfortunes and
distresses, would have done dishonour to the qualities of his heart ; and which
would by no means accord with the accounts given of his private character by
those who knew him well. Sometimes, however, in the course of Mary's long
captivity, he was on the contrary suspected, and even by Elizabeth herself, of
too fondly espousing the interests of the Scottish Queen. It is but a fair pre-
sumption therefore to entertain, at the very outset of this melancholy story, that
he souo-ht to deal as equally as he could between them, and that his own
memorable answer to the remark of Mary herself, during her trial, conveyed the
exact sum of his hostility towards her : " You are my professed enemy," said
the unhappy Queen. " Rathe*," replied Burghley, " the enemy of all who
would destroy the Queen my Sovereign."*
Having thus endeavoured to place this extraordinary competition of the two
Sovereigns on its proper footing, as affecting the Ministers and advisers of
* In a very remarkable letter he had to write to the Earl of Shrewsbury, in the year 1575,
he so feelingly describes the perplexity of his situation, that we cannot forbear anticipating
matters so far, as to transcribe a part of it. He assures Lord Shrewsbury, that he never indeed
had given just cause by any private affection of his own, or for himself, to offend the Queen of
Scots ; but that whatsoever he did was for the service of his own Sovereign Lady and Queen ;
which, if it were yet again to be done, he would do ; he knew, and did understand, that he was
in this contrary sort maliciously depraved ; in secret sort on the one part, and that of long
time, that he was the most dangerous enemy and ill-wisher to the Queen of Scots. On the
other side, that he was also a secret well-wisher to her and her title, and that he had made his
party good with her. " Now, my Lord," he goes on to say, " no man can make both these agree
together, but it sufficeth for such as like not me in doing my duty, to deprave me. In all these
crossings, my good Lord, I appeal to God. As for the Queen of Scots, truly I have no spot of
evil meaning to her; neither do I mean to deal with any titles to the Crown. If she shall
intend any evil to the Queen's Majesty my Sovereign, for her sake, I must and will mean to
impeach her; and therein I may be her unfriend and worse." As Queen Mary was at this
very time in the custody of Lord Shrewsbury, to whom the letter was addressed, it might be
regarded as. a sort of friendly warning to that unfortunate Princess, not to give too much coun-
tenance to Elizabeth's decided enemies, with whom she certainly always found means to hold
more intercourse than is generally apprehended. — See an account of this letter, Strypes Annals,
ii. 570, 571 ; and the letter itself in Lodges Illustrations of English History, No. CHI.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 193
Queen Elizabeth, we shall be the better able to pursue the course of those
extraordinary events, which became objects of perpetual care and attention to
the English Government, and in which Lord Burghley will be found constantly
to have occupied so conspicuous and so arduous a situation.
Henry VIII., it must be confessed, had done every thing he well could do,
to embroil the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, by passing over the
claims of his eldest sister, in the settlement of the succession ; and so preferring
the issue of his younger sister, after his own children, as to make it amount
to a positive and absolute exclusion of the elder branch of his family.* This
alone was enough to excite the most acrimonious feelings and jealousies,
independent of all other aggravating coincidences.
We must not wonder, therefore, that Mary, having passed into France, in
defiance of England, as she boasted to have done in a conference with Throck-
morton, "j" the English minister, and being betrothed and finally married to the
heir of that great kingdom, her relations there should have felt disposed to
assert her claims upon England, especially against Elizabeth, whom all sound
Catholics had been taught to regard as the spurious offspring! of the here-
tical Henry.$
In all this, there is nothing certainly to excite surprise, though it was
calculated in every way, as has been before intimated, to rouse the resentment
of England, and stimulate her to uphold and defend a Queen of her own
choice ; for so we may reasonably conclude Elizabeth to have been, not only
from the early and unanimous acknowledgment of her title on the demise of
Mary, but from the great popularity she is known to have possessed, from the
first moment of her accession.
We have now seen what was the course of things in the first and second
* Might not this have arisen more immediately from his anger against both Mary's parents?
Against James, for having so decidedly resisted his counsels and his friendship; and against
Mary of Guise, for having refused to marry him, as has been credibly reported? — See the Life
and Reign of Elizabeth, London, 1740, vol. i. 73. and Thompsons Memoirs of the Court of King
Henry VIII., 463.
t Cabala. I Campbell's Case of Mary Queen of Scots, p. 136.
\ When Elizabeth was in trouble on the occasion of Wyat's rebellion, Henry II. of France
sent privately to her letters full of assurances of love and friendship, inviting her to France ;
though his reason for such invitation, it is supposed, says the historian, was to make way for
the Queen of Scots, who was appointed to be his daughter-in-law, to possess herself of the
Crown of England after the death of Mary.— Life of Elizabeth, 82.
VOL. II. 2 C
194 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
years of Queen Elizabeth's reign ; and we are disposed to believe, that the
following very curions points in history will be admitted to have been proved
and established. That on Elizabeth's accession, a disposition was shewn
in France, not merely to dispute, but wholly to set aside, her presumed right
to the throne, by advancing Mary of Scots' claim, in so visible and notorious
a manner as could not be misunderstood. That notwithstanding the peace of
Cateau Cambrensis, the French King continued to keep an army in Scotland,
upon pretence of rebellion on the part of those who, having imbibed the
Protestant principles and belief, wished to secure to themselves liberty of
conscience, and, in the absence and during the foreign connexions of their
native Sovereign, to maintain the ancient rights and customs of the country,
and to reserve for " Scottish men" in preference to foreigners, the occupation
of the principal offices of the realm ; to uphold, besides, the next heirs of the
crown, in their reversionary rights, should their absent Queen die issueless.
It may be added, that the army ostensibly so opposed to the Protestant
Confederates was in the way of receiving large reinforcements, beyond the
alleged necessity of the case, and therefore could not fail, to be extremely
threatening and hazardous to England, in the weak state of her frontiers, and
under the avowed pretensions of Mary to the English Crown, especially having
the command of many forts and harbours.
It seems clear, also, that on the death of Henry II. of France, the danger to
England became more manifest in many ways; as first, in the succession of
Francis II., married to the Queen of Scots; in the great power of the family of
Lorrain, then increased, not only by the accession of Francis, but by the removal
of rival counsellors (particularly the Constable Montmorency), and eagerly
inclined on all accounts to forward and promote their niece's claim to the
crown of England ; having two great means of enforcing this claim by the way
of Scotland; first, through the Regency of Mary of Lorrain, the Queen Dowager,
and in the religious disputes, judged to afford a plausible pretence for augment-
ing their forces in that kingdom.
It seems also proved, by what has already been said, that the English Court
had very just reason to regard Scotland as the great seat of danger, and to
apprehend, that if the Lorrain and Catholic party were suffered to prevail against
the Protestant Confederates, her own doom was sealed ; and that in the compa-
ratively defenceless state of the Northern frontier, it might be suddenly assailed
by the French, or French and Scots united, and that it was, therefore, her most
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 195
obvious interest to uphold the Protestant party, and enter into such compacts as
might appear necessary to secure liberty of conscience to the favourers of the
Reformation in Scotland, the maintenance of her ancient rights, and on the
ground of a religious conformity, if it could be brought about, might lead to a
durable and permanent amity between the two countries. The Treaty of Edin-
burgh had a reference to all these points ; it provided against any offensive or
alarming claim to the crown of England on the part of Mary ; it was designed
to keep Scotland clear of French soldiery, and, consequently, to guard against
any attack upon England from that quarter by the French (or French and Scots
united), securing to the Protestant party in Scotland sufficient protection, or, at
least, forbearance, on the part of the French Court or Scottish Catholics.
The death of Francis II., unless this treaty should be fully ratified, seemed to
invalidate all that had passed. Mary was now in sole right Queen of Scotland,
and at liberty to return to her native dominions in full sovereignty ; and if there
had been no question about the security of England, and of Elizabeth, the
acknowledged Sovereign of England, and of the Protestant interest in both
countries, her passage from France to Scotland would of course have been
a simple transaction, and one with which, probably, no other state would have
been disposed to interfere ; but the case in reality was far different : she
was still completely in the hands of her uncles of Lorrain ; her education had
been entirely French, and such, therefore, of course, were her habits and
manners. She had been bred a Roman Catholic, in the bosom of a rigidly
Roman Catholic family, and she had been notoriously encouraged, not only to
consider herself presumptive heiress to the crown of England, after Elizabeth,
but as actual Queen of England, in contempt of the claims of Elizabeth, which
were judged to be altogether spurious— she had also been taught to regard the
Congregation in Scotland as rebels to her authority, and, in their combination
with England, particularly opposed to her on the ground of religion.
It would be difficult to say how the posture in which she stood could have
been rendered more suspicious to England, or to the Confederate Lords in Scot-
land, then in alliance with the former country. We must regard home securities as
the main objects of all diplomacy. It cannot reasonably be wondered, that the
English Ministry, whether at home or in France, should be anxiously concerned
to procure, if possible, that the widowed Queen might return to her own domi-
nions on terms conformable to the Treaty so recently concluded at Edinburgh,
in which Elizabeth's title to the English crown and to Ireland was fully, and
19g MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
exclusively of all competitors, recognised ; in which liberty of conscience and
pardon were secured to the Protestant party, and in which every guard had been
put upon the undue and irregular influence of foreign interests. These were cer-
tainly points of great importance, whether they regarded England or Scotland ;
they were points which the real friends of both countries might well be excused for
seeking to establish upon a firm footing, by procuring the young Queen to ratify
the treaty before she returned to her own country. But when we look to the
other side of the question, we must equally admit that Mary was in the way to be
wholly set against that treaty, as in no small degree compromising her rights, both
as a.claimant to the English throne, and as the mistress of her own subjects. On
the death of Francis, her situation in the French Court was greatly changed ;
she was too much of a Lorrainer to be trusted, or admitted to the confidence of
Queen Catherine de Medtcis, her mother-in-law,* or of the new King, or of the
Princes of the blood, who were strangely associated with Catherine, at that time,
as a counterpoise to the Guise faction. Mary, in truth, had enemies on all sides
when she first began to entertain thoughts of returning from France to Scotland;
and what, perhaps, was still more unfortunate, she had friends also on all sides,
so likely to embroil matters and render her reign uneasy, that whatever might
be the private character of either of the two Queens, now brought, as it were,
into immediate contact with each other, it would be almost absurd to suppose
that either of them could have escaped the difficulties arising out of the general
confusion of European politics, or the strifes and controversies of religion. To
* It is, we believe, not very generally known, that the death of Francis was attended with very
suspicious and strange circumstances. We copy the following from the History of Elizabeth, by
Mad"c. de Keralio: — " La Mort de Francois II. suspendit le coupqu' on alloit porter au Prince de
Conde. Malgr6 1'excessive delicatesse de temperament du roi, sa mort fit naitre des soup9ons
qui n'ont jamais fete eclaircis. Catherine de Medicis en fut 1'objet: on ignore si ce crime n'effraya
point son ame cruelle. Au milieu du tumulte ou etoit la cour, les restes du jeune roi, furent, long-
temps abandonnes, et pour ainsi dire oublies ; on pensa enfin a lui donner la sepulture, mais plutot
pour se delivrer d' un soin importun, que pour lui rendre un devoir, sa mere et ses oncles dedaigne-
rent d'assister aux funerailles, Marie Stuart, renfermee dans son apartement, outrages par la reine
sa belle-mere, abandonnee de la cour, obtint a peineque ses deux gouverneurs, et un seul eveque
conduisissent a Saint Denis le corps de son mari." The same writer tells us, that the people were
so shocked at this neglect, that a billet was thrown on the coffin to this effect: " Tanneguy du-
Chastel, oiies-tu? Mais tu ^tois Francois." — Tanneguy du-Chastel being banished from the Court
in the time of Charles VII., came back on purpose to bury his Sovereign at his own expense, in
defiance of the wrath of Louis XI. " Mais tu etois Francois," evidently referred to the Guises, as
well as the Queen-mother, they being equally accounted/oragners to France.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 197
these we must look for the real history of the misfortunes of her who sank in the
struggle, while, in common justice to the other party, as strict an account as
possible should be taken of those misfortunes which, though escaped, were
constantly threatening, and only evaded at last by incessant vigilance, a constant
care to give the enemy no advantage, and to preserve all that had been already
obtained in favour of Elizabeth's right to the crown, in favour of Protestantism,
both in England and Scotland, and in favour of the general liberties of mankind,
wherever attacked, by the ancient bigotry and tyranny of Catholicism.
It is taking a very narrow view indeed of the policy of England, at this most
momentous period, to confine it to little points of personal jealousy, or merely
national rivalry. There was a common cause on foot throughout Europe, of
much greater magnitude, and in regard to which, the two Queens stood quite as
much opposed to each other, as could be the case in respect to the competition
for the English crown. Nor is it at all too much to say, that in this opposition
to each other, the greater strength was on the side of Mary. Elizabeth stood
forward as the champion of the weaker, though most popular cause ; while Mary
had the whole support of the bigoted and domineering party, ready to afford
her such countenance as was totally wanting on the other side — we mean the
full weight of that superstitious awe and veneration which still bound a
large majority, in most of the kingdoms of Europe, to the hierarchy of Rome,
and gave as much force as ever to the decrees and fulminations of an angry
Pontiff.
We have already observed, that it is too common with the world, to think
that because Mary fell, Elizabeth was comparatively in a state of less jeopardy
and danger ; but had not the latter been supported by such Ministers, as French
perfidy, Italian subtlety, Spanish bigotry, and German power, never before had to
contend with, as her cause was at first the weakest, her danger would have been
constantly the greatest ; being threatened in all directions by those who, on the
ground of religion alone, and at all events, could not but be regarded as Mary's
friends, and Elizabeth's foes.
Francis II. had scarcely breathed his last, before Mary found it necessary to
retire from the French Court to her uncles of Lorrain : though even before
that, she seems to have received many applications from England, to have the
new Treaty of Edinbugh ratified, on which so much depended at this formidable
period. So early as the 5th of January, one month only after the death of Francis,
according to Lord Burghley's notes, intelligence appears to have been received
198 MEMOIRS .OF &O.RD BURGHLEY. £1661.
in England, from Sir Peter Meutas, who had been dispatched to France for the
purpose, that Mary refused to confirm the Treaty. Qn the 23d of the same
month, according to the same notes, " the Earl of Bedford was sent to France,
where Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was then ambassador ; amongst other things,
to require the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, and to compliment
Charles IX. on his accession." On the 10th of February the Earl " arrived at
Fontainbleau ; " and on the 2(>th he and "Sir Nicholas wrote home, that having
demanded of the Queen of Scots the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh,
she had deferred it 'till she might have some of hir nobilitie of Scotland there
in France with hir." It is impossible not to feel for Mary's distressing situation
at this time, which exposed her, at so trying a moment, to the interruption of
such unpleasant embassies ; and it may teach us the better to appreciate the
comparative blessings of a more private station : but that there was ample reason,
in a political point of view, thus early to ascertain, if possible, her feelings and
sentiments, with regard to the Treaty of Edinburgh, the great work of Cecil,
cannot be doubted by any who shall have carefully and impartially considered the
dangers with which both England and Scotland were threatened, if Mary should
be found decidedly averse from the tenor, spirit, and principles of that celebrated
compact. In the month of March, Mary received a visit from her natural
brother, the Lord James Stuart, sent to France expressly to invite her home, spe-
cially commissioned indeed to attend upon her by the Lords of the Congregation ;
and to him she first appears to have communicated her intention of returning to
her native dominions, which he was not backward to encourage her to do, hoping,
however, to obtain that influence over her, which might secure to himself and
his party the advantages they had acquired in the late struggle ; while the
House of Lorrain was secretly looking to a totally different issue of things : they
expected to acquire fresh power, by having their niece removed from France to
the seat of her own sovereignty in Scotland, and becoming thereby an object to
neighbouring Princes, who, in the hopes of marrying her, might court their
friendship, and use them as mediators.* In the mean while, as they could bear
no good will to the Scottish Protestants, Mary was already placed between two
adverse parties, independently of all jealousies on the side of England, which
latter could not be expected to regard what was passing with indifference,
being all the while deeply implicated in the issue of things, especially as to the
influence either party might obtain over Mary.
• Buchanan.
1561.J MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 199
If the views of the English Government, at this moment, had been entirely
adverse to the peace and happiness of the young Queen, on the prospect of her
return to her native dominions, it might well be accused of wanton cruelty, and
the most barbarous intentions ; for Mary had indeed enough to contend with>
without any interposition on the part of England. Speaking of the consent of
her uncles in France (after much deliberation as it would seem) to let her pass
into Scotland, on the invitation of the Lord James, Buchanan writes, that " the
Queen's resolution swayed much in the case, who was determined to return into
her own country ; for her husband was dead, and her mother-in-law (who
managed matters of state) shewing some disgusts towards her, she saw she
should grow cheap at that Court;* and though she had been but little used
to Government,t yet being in the spring and flower of her age, and of a lofty
spirit, she could not bear to cringe under another : she had rather have any
fortune with a kingdom, than the richest without one." We are not disposed to
cite Buchanan generally, as to the fortunes of this much pitied Queen, but his
account, in this instance, with the trifling exception we have noticed, appears to
be most true, and it serves to shew, what is not always regarded, that the unhappy
Mary had female enemies, or, at least, false friends, in the Court from which she
came, and who could have no such powerful causes of jealousy personally, as
was the case with Elizabeth. Catherine de Medicis hated the Guises ; but a
* Catherine de Medicis, in fact, in order to get the Government of France into her own hands,
heartily wished Mary out of her way, and, for the little love she bore to the Guises, might have
wished that she had no independent kingdom to resort to, or that her consequence was much less
in the world than it really was.
"The Queen Dowager," says Dr. Cook, speaking of Catherine de Medicis, "a woman of
unbounded ambition, and the most furious passions, had viewed, with the utmost jealousy, envy,
and indignation, the ascendancy which the beauty, accomplishments, and talents of his Queen had
acquired over the feeble mind of Francis ; and she had no sooner, in consequence of his dissolution,
regained the direction of affairs, than she acted towards her daughter-in-law with a degree of
coldness, or of contempt, which wounded her pride, and aggravated her sorrows."
Finally, the French historian, Daniel, tells us, that Mary, " had it. been in her power, would
have chose rather to reside in France with the title of Queen Dowager, than to sit upon the throne
of Scotland; but the Queen Mother could not endure her."
t This must be received with some qualification, if the following account be true, which
Throckmorton sent to Cecil in the first year of Elizabeth's reign: " And seeing the house of Guise
now ruleth, with whom I am in very small grace, and that the Queen of Scotland (who is a great
doer here, and taketh all upon her) hath so small an opinion of me, as I shall be able to do small
service with her." This letter is dated July 13, 1559.— 'Forbes, i. 160.
200 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
temporary Court influence was all she had at stake. Elizabeth's stake, as
regarded Mary, was a crown; a crown disputed, claimed, and, by many
Catholics in all countries, assigned to the latter as her just inheritance, and in
defiance particularly of her who wore it, as the Protestant daughter of the
apostate Henry — for such he was looked upon at Rome.
Of the view taken by the English Government of the aspect of things at this
time, we may form a good judgment from a memorial sent to Thomas Randolph,
" to execute diverse thinges for the service of the Quenes Majestie in Scotland,"
taken from a minute of Secretary Cecil. It is dated March 17, 1560 (i. e. 1 560-1),
just before the Lord James left Scotland to visit his sister in France. We may
look upon it probably in the light of instructions from the English Court, in
regard to the embassy on which Lord James was going ; and there can be little
doubt but that it proceeded wholly from the pen of the celebrated Minister
whose life we are writing.
Randolph was to make it known in Scotland that " the Protestant Princes of
Germany, being assembled at Nawenburgh on the 20th of January last past,
for the renovation of the league made heretofore, for a mutual defence of them-
selves against the Pope and all his adherents, had sent to the Queen (Elizabeth)
intelligence of their doings, requiring her Majesty to continue in her religion,
and to further the like in Scotland, — he was therefore commissioned to declare
to such of the Nobility of Scotland as were inclined to the same cause, that her
Majesty saw daily, that no amity or friendship so certain between the two
kingdoms could be established, as that which should be grounded on an unity
and consent in Christian religion — he was therefore to solicit such to persevere,
and if he saw any perplexed with doubts, to remind them, how well the
profession stood then in France, where freedom was granted to all persons to
live with a free conscience, who should observe common peace and tranquillity ;
so that the Nobility of Scotland, observing common peace amongst themselves,
and rendering their duty to their Sovereign, in things concerning their obedience,
there would be no cause to fear any power to offend them. That he should
represent to all who had the amity of the two realms at heart, that now, whilst
their Sovereign is unmarried (a widow) and out of the country, the very time is
to make an accord between the two realms, either for a perpetual peace, or, at
the very least, very long to continue. And while the Queen of Scots and
Scotland is free from the unprofitable old league with France, to make either
a new league between the two Queens and their realms, or to annul or qualify
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 201
such heads or articles of the old league with France, as had been frequent
occasions of quarrel between the two realms. Thinking this a good opportunity
for the Scottish Nobility to induce their Queen not only to allow of the device,
but for her own sake to be very desirous of it. The Kings of Scotland in time
past must have seen what ruin and hostility from England, proceeding only
from the old league with France, had come upon their country ; so that being
now free to remedy the same, if that league shall be knitt up again, the Queen
herself and her posterity would most repent it. That it was now extremely
necessary for them to consider with whom their Queen should marry, for if she
again married a stranger, the same evils or worse might ensue, and those who
had lately stood forth in defence of the ancient rights and liberties, might, if
they stood not well in her favour, be brought to great danger by such a
marriage; and that therefore they should endeavour to persuade their Queen
to marry at home,* or else, not without some great security to those who ought
to succeed ; that is, stood in the proper line of inheritance. That the Duke of
Chatelherault and all his family ought to see, that to them there remaineth no
other surety than this service ; while all others who had not yet intermeddled,
should perceive of how great importance it was that she should match with
such a husband, as might bring universal quietness to her kingdom, and sure
peace with England. And that the said Randolph should use his discretion in
conferring with such as were well addicted to the cause of religion, and to the
good amity between the two realms." — Such was Cecil's view of the case only
five months before Mary came to Scotland ; for though she is known to have
arrived in the year 1561, March 17, 1560, was, according to the reckoning in
our days, in the same year.
Must we be expected to say, that this was drawn up by any professed, or even
insidious enemy to Queen Mary ? The whole was admirably fitted exactly to
preserve her from those distractions which afterwards involved her in ruin. It
was no fault of the English Government, that Protestantism and Catholicism (to
speak according to the language of the times) were at issue with each other
in most of the states and kingdoms of Europe. The case was so ; Elizabeth and
the Congregationists of Scotland, had taken their part, in the common struggle
of Europe, and it was rather wishing well to Mary than otherwise, to place her
* At this very time the Princes of Lorrain were seeking to marry her to Charles of Austria,
who is said to have demanded sufficient security, that in case they should marry, Mary's claim to
the English crown should be effectually prosecuted.
VOL. II. 2 D
202 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
at the head of a party, which we know better now perhaps than ever, was con-
tending for the dearest rights of man ; freedom of conscience ; freedom of opi-
nion ; and release from a thraldom the most odious and irrational ; not merely
in conjunction with Elizabeth or Cecil, or perfidious England, as the expression
of some is, but with all the foreign Reformists ; the Lutherans of Germany, the
Hugonots of France, the Zuinglians, or Calvinists of Switzerland. Mary,
unhappily, would not be persuaded to take this part, but it was laid open to her,
and put to her choice. She was, upon the advice of England, through its
agent Randolph, to be solicited to make common cause with the Protestant
Princes of Germany, the Protestants of France, among whom were several
Princes of the blood, the Protestants of her own realm, among whom was her
natural brother, and the presumptive heirs to her throne, and with the Pro-
testant Queen of England, her nearest neighbour, and who could be her friend,
politically speaking, on no other terms. If the hint about the marriage be
judged an unworthy restraint upon an independent Queen, what shall we say of
the interference on this head in the case of Mary of England, or of the endea-
vours made to marry Elizabeth, when Princess, to some foreign Prince, merely
to get her out of the way ?
Mary evaded all Cecil's pleas and proposals ; but in this, as far as regarded
her religion, she acted upon her own principles, and must stand excused : — *
principles that had many powerful fautors — but it manifestly threw her out of
the line of that concord and amity recommended by England, and from which
line England herself could not depart, consistently, honourably, or safely.
* Not merely excused, but commended — we can join with all those who think highly of her
conscientious adherence to her own religion; but we cannot in the same degree blame those who
desired her conversion to Protestantism. Some of the nearest relatives and descendants of
Francis I. had become Protestants, and it was no unkindness in those who were such upon con-
viction, to wish Mary to be so instructed as to see her errors. We are led to make the above
distinction from the following passage in Mad"'. Keralio's History. Speaking of Mary's appoint-
ment of a Protestant Ministry and Council, she observes, " Que pouvoit-elle faire de plus ? Re-
noncer a sa foi? C'etoit ce que desiroient les predicans, la noblesse, et la Reine d'Angleterre :
mais la foi de Marie etoit trop sincere, et sa conscience trop pure, pour acheter la paix et le
repos par une lache abjuration des sentimens de son coeur." — At all events, this censure contains
an acknowledgment, that those who sought her conversion, had her quiet and happiness in view,
not as the purchase of a base apostacy, but of an honest conviction. Could Mary of England
have been brought to listen to the instructions of Ridley, [see vol. i. pp. 432. 544.] how much
happier and peaceful, and beneficial to her subjects, might her life and reign have been.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 203
Mary, it may be now said, was to be pitied ; but Elizabeth, at the same time,
was equally acting on her principles,* and had she fallen, she would have excited
probably no pity at all in her adversaries. Mary is said to have been of a
temper naturally violent, and impatient of contradiction, having been flattered in
France, on account of her personal charms. — (McCrie, vol. ii. 22.) This seems
very much to be confirmed by her spirited conversation with Throckmorton, of
which we shall have more to say, and which may be seen in the Cabala. We
are not saying these things to prejudice her cause, but to account for resent-
ments, and weaken a little, if we can fairly do it, the force of those bitter and
unqualified invectives heaped upon Elizabeth and her Ministers, as though all
hostilities against Mary, rested on no other foundation than a frivolous and
womanish competition on the score of beauty and accomplishments. It may
be impossible to make Elizabeth appear amiable, but that she received from
France, the most glaring affronts on her elevation to the English throne, can
never be denied ; and unfortunately for Mary, more from her immediate rela-
tions than from any others, nor is it reasonable to expect that a daughter of
Henry VIII. , in an age of relentless cruelty, should have inherited a very soft or
tender heart ; yet, after all, we expect to be able to shew, that she treated the
competitor for her throne with more forbearance than was the case with many
of her contemporaries. What an example had been afforded her of summary
vengeance, in the deplorable case of Lady Jane Grey ! and yet Mary was
eighteen years in the power of Elizabeth. While we feel for Mary, therefore,
we are not always bound to bow to the feelings of her very partial advocates. f
We do not of course allude to those who have employed themselves to detect
forgeries, which always should be detected if they can ; nor yet to those who
have taken every fair means of extenuating the faults of this most unfortunate
Princess ; but to those who, in resentment of her sufferings, have loaded Eliza-
beth, and all her Ministers (but particularly the subject of this Memoir), and a
large party in Scotland, with, as we said before, unqualified invectives, as though
slie alone were the marked object of all their measures, and without any other
end in view than her humiliation, deprivation, and destruction. Whereas, the
• " A kingdom," says Camden, " brooketh no companion, and Majesty more heavily taketh
injuries to heart."
f " There is something amusing," says the author of the Biographia Britannica, [Art. Bu-
ehanan, Note 5.] " in the extreme zeal which some late authors have discovered for the honour and
reputation of Queen Mary. It appears a kind of literary Quixotism."
204 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
only historical view to take of the subject, is to consider, by what inevitable
circumstances, she fell into the vortex of a revolution extending itself throughout
Europe, and of which it only happened to be her fate to be one of the most
conspicuous, most lamented, and most splendid victims.
The Lord James's embassy (for he had his commission, as we have said, from
a convention of estates) to the widowed Queen, his sister,* was certainly
designed to prepare her as much as possible, to return to her own country and
dominions, upon a footing of confidence with his party, and under a hope
probably of leading her to take such measures, as might not undo what had so
recently been accomplished, to free her subjects from a foreign yoke, and
ensure to such as had espoused the cause of the Reformation, liberty of con-
science. There might, at least, have existed a possibility of her becoming
detached from the bigoted counsels of her foreign advisers, by forming some
new alliance more friendly to the interests of Scotland and of England; or by
inducing her to confide moce in her natural born subjects, than in any foreigners.
In this case, as in all others, we should look to the alternative of her returning
to her own country, under different impressions. What hope could there be
for the friends of the Reformation, what confidence could they have that the
member of a Church, which notoriously encouraged all practicable deceit and
dissimulation, would not resist the attacks making on the Pope's authority, and
take measures to reduce all stragglers to their pristine obedience?
But it is pretty well known, that in all that Lord James was doing to procure
security for the Protestants, be had been forestalled by a different agent from
Scotland. Leslie, afterwards Bishop of Ross, had been with the Queen before
the arrival of the Lord James, for the very contrary purpose, of prepossessing
her against the Protestants, and to persuade her, on her return, to land where
they were so few, and her Catholic adherents so numerous, as to afford her
every fair means, by the weight of her authority, and an army at her command
* In Burnet's History of the Reformation, vol. iii. part ii. No. 71., there is a letter from Mary
to the English Ambassador, in which she seems decidedly to say, that her brother had no
charge or commission. The note or letter has a wrong date in the Oxford edition, purporting to
be written a Nanci ce 22 d'Avril, 1662, at which time, Mary, as is well known, was in Scot-
land ; but the next letter, No. 72, from Sir N. Throckmorton to the Queen, abundantly explains
it. Dr. Cook thinks, Mary denied the Lord James's commission, in order to evade Throck-
morton's suggestion, that, having communicated with him, she must be apprised of the senti-
ments of her council in Scotland, for which she professed to be waiting.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 205
(of, at the least, 20,000 men), of overthrowing the Reformed Church at once,
before it had had time to settle itself.
We may form some opinion from these two embassies, or missions (for
Leslie appeared as the Representative of the Catholics),* how divided a country
she was about to revisit, and how little chance there was of peace and quiet-
ness, if she should make a wrong choice in the appointment of her first council,
or in the distribution of her favour.
That she was a Romanist in all her principles and feelings there can be no
doubt ; that Leslie's advice was most consonant with the general views of her
friends in France, can be as little questioned : but the juncture did not appear
favourable to the adoption of Leslie's opinion. The House of Lorrain had too
much to do at home, to give much support to its friends in Scotland, and the
army that had just returned from thence gave no encouragement to such
precipitate measures. She was, therefore, rather allowed to listen to the Lord
James, and to regulate her return according to his direction and representation
of affairs.
And what had England to do on this occasion ? certainly, as much as
possible to insist upon the ratification of the late concluded Treaty, not as a
ground of quarrel, but the best preparatory step to a firm and stable peace
between the two kingdoms, the security of England being otherwise left in a
most precarious state. Throckmorton had a hard task upon his hands in
pressing this measure upon Mary, against her Six uncles of the House of
Lorrain, who accompanied her even to the very water's edge, on her departure
from France, and by whom, no doubt, she was encouraged to act that part,
which we may admire, rather than approve. She had requested Elizabeth to
be allowed to pass through England ; it is easy to regard the refusal of such a
request, as too marked an affront to be borne with any patience ; as betraying
a want of courtesy bordering upon barbarity, a feeling of superiority ill
becoming a Queen of, perhaps, less royal pretensions ; to deny a widowed
Queen of such tender years, a passage to her own dominions, must be allowed?
without further consideration, to impress every feeling mind with a most
unfavourable opinion of Elizabeth's delicacy of sentiment and tenderness of
heart. But she has had more laid to her charge, than should be always
* His mission was the result of a meeting, held very privately, by the Earls of Huntley
(always wavering), Crawford, Atholl, Sutherland, the Bishop of Murray, and Leslie himself,
Bishop of Ross.
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLET. [1661.
credited; especially, wbere we hate reasons afforded us to think, that she
often found her match in such apparent freaks of jealousy.
Let us consider in the first place, that the request was not unconditionally
or peremptorily refused. If Mary would but consent to ratify the Treaty of
Edinburgh,* she was not only to be permitted to pass through England, but
to l>c entertained and escorted on her way with all due honour. This she
strenuously however, refused to do, and not merely resented Elizabeth's
refusal, but witli a degree of pride and contempt not to be mistaken, blamed
herself for having condescended to ask such a passage ; and with a resolution,
certainly well befitting an independent Queen, but yet notoriously bespeaking
no Htnall anger against Elizabeth and her Ministers, if not a positive contempt
of both, determined to brave the perils of the sea, and find her way home by
the German Ocean.
Here, then she was a match for Elizabeth ; we discern in her conduct the fea-
ture* of a heroine, and must admire her spirit, while we foresee the bad conse-
quences of Hueh a defiance ; but we must consider the political bearings of the
case. The stability of Elizabeth's throne may be said to have been involved in
the question concerning the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh ;"f Mary was
* Mary certainly ought to have ra ified the Treaty according to th« powers given to the Com-
niiMMonciK ; which lion: her name as will as that of Francis, and with the following distinctions
in the ilntc of their respective authorities over Scotland. " L'an de tiuz regnes, assavoir de France
li: premier, et d" EMCOKHC ICH deux et(dix geptiemc.)" See the Commission itself, Forbes, i. 397.
| In tin; history of the life and reign of Elizabeth, 1740, evidently after Rapin, it is said,
" Mury, on hrr side, had strong retiMn* to elude this ratification ; ghe was persuaded Elizabeth
wan not the legitimate daughter of Henry VIII., and that neither his will, nor an act of parlia-
ment, could give her a right which nature denied." If Mary was under such a mistake, with
rc.giird lo the power of an English act of parliament at this period, the author ought to have
known, (hut her opinion noon after was very different ; when she took all the pains she could, in
npile of Elizabeth, to procure a parliamentary recognition of her own claim; which, if her right
by nature hud been so preferable to that of Elizabeth, would have been, by this author's account,
iiniipcunnry. What ho miys afterwards is more to the purpose : and probably exceedingly true;
" U|K)ii il.is mppoHiiion, Mary believed the crown of England was fallen to her, as next heir to
the diTcuiied Quevii ; aud though Elizabeth had possession, she did not despair of wresting it
from her, with the nssistunce of France, Spain, the Pope, and the English Catholics. But if by
ratifying the Treaty of Edinburgh, she owned herself in the wrong to assume the title of Queen of
England, and promised with an oath never to bear it more, she had cause to fear her friends
would prow very cool. To what purpose, then, did Francis order his plenipotentiaries to sign a
trinity, wliich be did not intend to ratify ? To this the answer is easy : he could not otherwise
1661.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 207
now returning to Scotland, not merely as much as ever a suspicious competitor
for the English crown, but an angry one. There was no foreboding what the
consequences to England might be, if she returned to her kingdom in a state of
feeling, totally adverse to the principles and basis of that Treaty. And
nothing certainly was more to be expected, considering the school from which
she came, the tutors she had been under, and the rival claims she had been
encouraged to indulge.
That Mary was likely to return home not simply a competitor for the English
crown, but an angry one, will appear from what follows. There is scarcely
perhaps, a more curious document to be produced, from the archives of
diplomacy, than Sir N." Throckmorton's long letter to Queen Elizabeth,
printed in the Cabala; the date being from Paris, July 26, 1561, six months
only after the death of Francis, and not so much as one before Mary's actual
arrival in Scotland. If we may believe it to be all true (and there appears to
be no reason to doubt it), Mary must have been a most extraordinary woman;
and, considering all things, a proper match for Elizabeth. Elizabeth had just
refused Mary's envoy, M. d'Oysel, a passage into Scotland through England,
and even extended the restriction to Mary herself, on the ground " that she had
not yet," as Camden writes, "according to \\erfaith given, ratified the Treaty of
Edinburgh ;" and, according to the same author, she had rudely done this, " in
presence of a great multitude standing by."
M. d'Oysel had returned to France, and made his report to Mary of all that
had passed ; let us now then pursue the tenor of the English Minister's extra-
ordinary letter.
After stating that d'Oysel had, on the 17th, reported to Mary the answer he
had received from Elizabeth, he writes, " and hearing also of the sundry
praises and discourses made here, of that your Majesty answered, I sent to
Dampier (a house of the Cardinal of Lorrain), to require audience of the
Queen of Scots, which she appointed to have the next day, in the afternoon at
St. Germaines. She was accompanied at Dampier with her uncles the Cardi-
nals of Lorrain and Guise, and the Duke of Guise; there was also the Duke
of Nemours."
On the 20th, Throckmorton waited on Mary according to appointment ; and
draw his forces out of Scotland, where they were besieged, nor oblige Elizabeth to recall hers.
As to the breach of his word, it did not then much concern the French Court. Now as Mary was at
that time in subjection to a husband, she threw upon him whatever was amiss in their conduct."
208 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
found M. d'Oysel talking to her. The English Minister explained to her, how
earnestly the Queen, his mistress, desired to have the Treaty of Edinburgh
ratified ; he told Mary that she not only stood bound by her hand and seal,
whereby the French Commissioners were authorized, but that many promises of
ratification had passed, as well in the King's time, as by herself since his death.
That a whole year had elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty, which was to
have been ratified in sixty days. " So that upon this unamicable and indirect
dealing, the Queen, my mistress, hath refused you these favours and pleasures
by you required ; but if you can like to be better advised, and to ratify the
Treaty, as you in honour are bound to do, her Majesty will not only give you
and yours free passage, but also will be most glad to see you pass through her
realm, that you may be accommodated with the pleasure thereof; and such
friendly conference may be had betwixt you, as all unkindness may be
quenched, and an assured perfect amity betwixt you both for ever established."
Mary's reply to this, is certainly most remarkable for a young person of only
nineteen years of age. She sat down by Throckmorton, desiring all other per-
sons to retire, for fear she should give too much vent to her passion ; " liking
not," as she added, " to have so many witnesses to my passions, as the Queen,
your mistress, was content to have when she talked with M. d'Oysel. There is
nothing that does more grieve me, than that I did so far forget myself, as to
require of the Queen, your mistress, that favour of which I had no need to ask ;
I needed no more to have made her privy to my journey, than she doth me of
hers. I may pass well enough home into my own realm I think, without her
passport or license; for though the late King your Master (Edward VI.), used
all the impeachment he could to stay me,* and catch me when I came hither ;
yet you know, Mons. L' Ambassadeur, I came hither safely, and I may have as
good means to help me home again.— You know, both in this realm, and
elsewhere, I have both friends and allies, and such as would be glad and
willing to employ both their forces and aid to stand me in stead ; I ask her
nothing but friendship ; I do not trouble her state, nor practise with her
subjects ; and yet I know there be in her realm that be inclined enough to have
This alone was enough to shew the rancour she had been taught to encourage
against England. She had been betrothed to Edward, when the French stole her away from
Scotland ; and Edward was far more deserving of her hand than Francis II. but the whole
transaction had been an offence to England, from the time it happened ; for which see our first
Volume.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 209
offers; I know also, they be not of the mind she is of, neither in religion nor other
things."
She next attempts to excuse herself entirely, from being answerable for any
thing done in her husband's time ; and pretends, that being by his death
dissolved from all connexion with France, she was not to look for any further
benefit from the advice of her uncles, but must seek to be advised by her own
subjects. The latter, however, could scarcely be regarded by Throckmorton
otherwise than as a pretence, as he told the Queen Mother ; since two or three
assemblies of the Scottish Nobles, had been held since the death of Francis, and
a communication kept up by Mary ; and yet this matter of the Treaty had never
been propounded to them. He mentions next, the secresy attending her arrange-
ments for quitting France, and notices a remark of Henry of Navarre (afterwards
Henry IV.) to be conveyed by his desire to Elizabeth ; intimating it to be his
opinion, that the King of France would shew himself more affectionate to Mary
than to Elizabeth.
But there is one passage in Mary's discourse so passionately resentful of
Elizabeth's refusal of a passport, that we cannot forbear transcribing it. " If
my preparations were not so much advanced as they are, peradventure the
Queen your mistress's unkindness might stay my voyage ; but now I am deter-
mined to adventure the matter, whatsoever come of it. I trust the wind will be
so favourable, as I shall not need to come on the coast of England ; and if I do,
then, Mons. L Ambassadeur , the Queen, your mistress, shall have me in her
hands, to do her will of me ; and, if she be so hard-hearted as to desire my
end, she may then do her pleasure, and make sacrifice of me."
These are lofty sentiments if she really expected to be murdered ; but it is
very extraordinary, that with six uncles in attendance upon her, three ready to
accompany her,* as well as the celebrated Bishop Leslie, she should have
been allowed to run such a risk, if there had been any solid foundation for
fancying, that her very life depended on such a mere contingency as a favour-
able wind, to keep her from the English shores. At all events, a more
spirited defiance, was never, we think, heard of; and one, which she must
have known, would be transmitted to Elizabeth, before she could have
time to embark. But all defiances carry with them provocation; there had
* Viz. The Due d' Aumale, the Grand Prior, and the Marquis d' Elbceuf. See Cook's History
of the Reformation in Scotland, iii. 53. The Bishop of Ross was also to sail with her,
(Castclnau) and the eldest son of the Constable Montmorency.
VOL. II. 2 E
210 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
been a great deal of shuffling on the part both of Francis and herself, with
regard to the Treaty of Edinburgh, which was the main security of England
and Scotland, against Catholicism and foreign subjection. Elizabeth had a
clear right to desire to have it ratified — a great majority of Mary's own subjects
wished to have it ratified before her return ; upon these terms she was invited,
cordially invited, to return by England to her native dominions, on a promise of
being entertained and received with all due honour and distinction. — However
spirited and magnanimous Mary's conference with Throckmorton may now be
thought ; and however much, knowing as we now do the catastrophe of her
sad story, we may feel inclined to applaud her resentment of Elizabeth's refusal
to let her pass through England, yet, so early to heap provocation upon pro-
vocation on Elizabeth's head, and with no small scorn of her Ministers, as well
as of herself,* was certainly a course of conduct, destitute of all prudence, and
if the truth were known, probably arose from an inexperience at that time, of
the spirit, vigour, and resolution, with which the affairs of England were about
to be conducted. Mary might boast of her friends and allies, and the forces
they would be glad to bring to her aid, but Elizabeth and her Council were
not to be intimidated by such boasts, much less by any proud defiance.
It is, we believe, pretty generally understood and credited, that Elizabeth sent
out a fleet to intercept Mary on her passage. It is not however a fact entirely
capable of proof; the allusion supposed to be made to it in a speech of the Lord
Keeper Bacon, seems to us to amount to the most direct testimony of such inten-
tions on the part of the Queen and her Council. But if she had been inter-
cepted, some, in their rage against Elizabeth, think she would never have been
allowed to reach Scotland, or would, in short, have been destroyed. The times
were bad enough for almost any thing, but we think we have proofs to shew,
that she might have been intercepted for much better and more innocent pur-
poses ; we still feel, however, some hesitation in giving full credit to the fact. It
is, we believe, admitted to be a good rule of negative moral evidence, that if a
writer, having every inducement to mention an historical fact, does not mention
it, the probability is, that it was not true.f
Now we find this moral evidence against it, in a curious little book, very
* " She hath said," says Throckmorton, in another part of the same letter, " that, at her
coming into Scotland, she will forthwith rid the realme of all the Englishmen there ; namely,
of your Majesty's agent there, and forbid mutual traffick with your Majesty's subjects."
f See Gambler's Rules of Evidence.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 211
seldom cited in works regarding Scotland, but which has occasionally afforded
us much amusement in tracing the effects of party prejudice. Concern, a Scotch
Catholic at Rome, of the 'very times of which we are writing, the author of
a Life of Mary Stuart, dedicated in form to Pope Urban VIII. ; though nothing
can exceed his inveteracy against Elizabeth for her hard usage of Mary, does
not once mention this purpose of intercepting her on her voyage, much less the
design to destroy her if she had been intercepted ; an omission, for which it
would be difficult to' account, if the fact had been universally, or even partially
credited. But we are disposed to make use of this author a little further, and
to produce him as a witness in extenuation of the design of intercepting her,
even if it had been true.
Now, Conaeus fully confirms the fact, that whatever might be intended against
Mary, a trick of this very kind was actually meditated in the case of the Lord
James, when he ventured into France to invite * Mary to return. A regular plan,
it seems, was suggested to Mary by his forerunner Leslie, who had arrived in
France on a mission from the Scottish Catholics, one day only before the
Lord James ; to intercept her brother, and, perhaps, send him into Italy or
Spain, but at all events, by some means or other, prevent his immediate return
to his native country. All which, this Catholic encomiast of Mary assures us,
the Queen herself highly approved, and would certainly have carried into exe-
cution, had not the Lord James (the bastard, Nothus, as he is constantly
called) by his soft speeches,"]" prevented her assenting to the wholesome remedy
(" sano remedio") tendered to her by Leslie. The whole passage is really very
curious. Leslie himself acknowledges, that he advised Mary to detain him, till
all her own arrangements were completed.
Speaking of the Lord James's mission from Scotland, whence he was coming,
through England, in order to be perfectly prepared for every wickedness and
artifice, he says, " Sed impia viri concilia prudentiaet celeritate pravenit Joannes
Leslceus, a Catholids, ad Principem destinatus. Hie de Nothi adventu Riegnae
exposuit, quse ferret, quae intenderet, admonens nullam ei Jidem habendam, qui
Religionem apud Scotos evertere, rerumque summam in se transferre moliretur :
quod si intacta omnia, salvamque se cuperet, eum in Gallia detinendum curaret,
* McCrie's Life of Knox, ii. 21.
\ Very different reasons have been given for Mary's attention to Murray, on this occasion.
The most probable, certainly is, that her uncles counselled her to temporise with the Protestants,
while their own hands were tied up by the disturbances in France.
212 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
vel si minus hoc placeret, in Italiam,zut Hispaniam mitteret oratorem. Hsec omnia,
Regina laudavit quidem, et facile quod rogabatur effecisset nisi superveniens No-
thus inanibus blanditiis optimam Principis mentem a sano remedio alienasset."*
We do not overlook the advantage that might be made of this passage, by the
friends of Mary, considering how things turned out in the end, but we cite it to
shew, that there was at least as much subtlety and artifice on the one side as on
the other, by the confession of the Catholics themselves ; for the Lord James
had quite as great a right to give counsel to Mary as Leslie, and as much right
to be allowed to return safe to those who sent him, and to his own country.
Knox tells us, he had nearly been assassinated at Paris, but this does not appear
to be very generally credited.
But had the Queen really been intercepted (for we cannot deny that there are
some strong proofs of its having been contemplated), how does it follow that
she would have come to any bodily harm ? no proof exists, we can venture to
say, that there was really any design of totally preventing her return to her
native dominions. We have, in a letter from Maitland to Cecil, a curious
statement of his opinion upon the subject, and the utmost of his wishes relating
to her return, seems to have been, that she should have been " stayed a little,"
that is, till things were more in order for her reception ;f till they should have
been able, for instance, to have brought their affairs into a more settled state,
which her too quick return might tend to disturb or retard, or till she could, in
England, be better instructed as to the true state of affairs in Scotland, and of
the necessity, if any solid peace were to be expected to take place between the
two kingdoms, or any firm friendship between the two Sovereigns, of her taking
the Treaty of Edinburgh as the basis of her proceedings. " Some say," says
Rapin, " she escaped the English fleet in a fog, which waited to intercept her,
but this is only a bare conjecture without proof. It is, however, very likely,
that, as affairs stood between her and Elizabeth, if she had been taken, she would
have been detained in England, at least till she had ratified the Treaty of
Edinburgh."
* P. 44. This may serve, not to justify, but to account for the suggestion thrown out by Sadler,
Letters, No. ccxxxiv. see note there. In justice to Sadler, it should be observed, that he only
speaks of the detention of Montluc, by the Duke of Chatelherault, as a pledge for his own son
detained in France.
f As nearly as can be what Leslie had recommended to be done with the Lord James. " II
lui conseilla," they are the words of Madllc. de Keralio, "de retenir en France ce frere perfide,
jusqu' a ce que, par sa prudence, elk out rctabli I'ordre et la paix dans son royaume."
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 213
As to Murray's design upon the crown, rumours to that effect we know were
afloat, before the death of the Regent, but we also know that the French had an
object in causing this to be believed, that they might with the more plausibility
send troops to Scotland ; the advocates of Mary, however, feeling sure that if it
were so, Elizabeth and Cecil must have been at the bottom of it, have, in more
than one instance, cited the following passage from Throckmorton the English
Ambassador in France, to Cecil, July 25, 1559, in proof of it.
" I am secretly informed, that there is a party in Scotland for placing the
Prior of St. Andrews in the state of Scotland, and that the Prior himself, by all
the secret means he can, aspires thereto." Now, if Elizabeth and Cecil, as it is
often asserted and maintained, were at the bottom of all the Prior's plots and
aspirings, one would think they would rather have sent such intelligence to
Throckmorton, then receive it from him at Paris. But Paris, as we have before
hinted, was the very place where at that time false rumours of this nature were
afloat, and encouraged, to further the intentions of the Princes of Lorrain.
Elizabeth and Cecil, indeed, seem to have been in the dark about it, since we
find instructions sent to Sir R. Sadler, in Scotland, to inquire into the truth of
such rumours, and if it were so as reported, neither to persuade or dissuade
him,* which sounds ill, but might bear this interpretation ; that, as persuasion
could scarcely be otherwise than wrong on the part of England, dissuasion
might, if useless, be extremely hazardous ; as likely to alienate him from the cause
of England. For in all, instances, there was, to England, an extreme danger of
hurrying the disobliged into the hands of Elizabeth's professed enemies.
Murray, though a Protestant, and though he should pretend to the crown, to
* See the special memorial for Sir Ralph Sadler, indorsed by Cecil, published in Sadler's
Letters, Number ccxli., it must be observed, that the "enterprise toward the crown of Scotland,"
spoken of, would seem from other passages in the Memorial, to refer rather to the Hamiltons
than Mary ; the probability of Mary's demise •without issue is not only alluded to, but the possibi-
lity of the Duke of Chatelherault, being " very cold in his own cause ;" i. e. as next heir.
Mr. Chalmers, and others after, as well as before him, have regarded this as a positive and
decided testimony of Cecil's design to instigate either the Duke or Murray to wrest the sceptre,
" from the legitimate hand of the actual possessor," which are Mr. Chalmers's own words. Who
would suppose, that the letter expressly referred to the contingency of the actual possessor's
dying without issue? — We only wonder that the latter clause was not seized upon, to shew that
the Secretary had a plan on foot, to provide for the removal of Mary by assassination before she
could have issue. This would but have been one calumny more, added to the rude mass
heaped on that celebrated statesman throughout the several pages of the history we refer to.
214 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
the offence of France, might, being thwarted or disobliged by England, turn to
the House of Burgundy for support ; it being quite as great an object to the
latter, particularly to Philip II., to prevent the French becoming too predomi-
nant in Scotland, as it was to Elizabeth. When Henry II. of France, by per-
suasion of the Constable Montmorency, sent Melvil into Scotland to sift the
report of Murray's design upon the crown, we know, that he returned to
France persuaded of the falsehood of such charges, and yet it is alleged, that
there must have been grounds for such suspicions, and that Elizabeth (and
consequently Cecil] were privy to them, since in certain instructions to Lord
Shrewsbury, the Queen is made to say, " Before the Treaty of Edinburgh there
was an intent discovered to us by Lethington, to deprive her (Queen Mary) of
her crown, which we utterly rejected ;" and though Murray's name is not here
mentioned, yet Camden asserts, that when Cecil met the confederate Lords
prior to the Treaty of Edinburgh, " the Lord James propounded such things,
as Cecyl judged neither meet to be propounded by subjects, nor by Princes to
"be granted." Still we think it very questionable, whether there was any allusion
in these passages to a design upon the crown by Murray, and if there were,
both Elizabeth and Cecil stand acquitted of all connivance or encouragement.
The learned author of the Life of Knox, who is very anxious to make it appear
that the Scottish Protestants were entirely loyal, in a long note upon the
subject, thinks Murray was no such favourite in England, as to be encouraged *
to such an attempt, but concludes that it was otherwise with regard to Arran ;
and, that there is to this day sufficient evidence produced, to shew, that the
Ministers of Elizabeth wished him to be raised to the throne of Scotland, and
a union of the two crowns accomplished 'by his marriage with Elizabeth.
Throckmorton's letters to Cecil are cited in proof of this, and particularly the
* Some of the advocates of Mary, to shew that Murray always aimed at the crown, strangely
enough refer to the evidence of the Duke of Norfolk, in 1569, who indeed, in a letter to Cecil,
preserved in Haynes, writes, that Murray had his eye upon the crown, but expressly calls it " a
novel intrigue ; a new mark in his eye— no less than a kingdom," and this in 1569. (See Goodall.)
The Duke also plainly acquits Elizabeth and Cecil of all thoughts that way, by the following
curious expression : " He that hath been so bold with his own mistress as to bereave her of her
kingdom and liberty, thinks it but a small matter to refuse to be advised with the Queens
Majesty." The mark in his eye then of a kingdom, in 1569, was not only a new mark in the
opinion of Norfolk, but encouraged, in defiance, it would seem, of Elizabeth, Cecil, &c. Two
months before, Murray had been promoting the match between Norfolk and his sister, the
Queen of Scots. — See Haynes, 520.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 215
two following passages : " The way to perfait this assuredly is, that the erle of
Arraine do as Edward IV. did, when he landed at Ravenspurg : (he pretended
to the duchy of York ; and having that, he would not leave 'till he had the diademe)
for then of necessity the erle of Arran must depend upon the devotion of Eng-
land, to maintein and defend himself. I fear all other devises and handelings
will prove like an apotecary his shop ; and, therefore, I leave to your discretion
to provyde by all meanes for this matter both there and in Scotland ;" — and
again, " Methinks, the Lord of Grange, Ledington, Balnaves, and the chief
doers of the Congregation (which I would wish specially to be done and pro-
cured by the Prior of St. Andrewes) should be persuaded to set forward these
purposes before : for there is no way for them to have any safety or surety,
onely this, make the Earl of Arran King ; and as it is their surety, so it is also
ours. In this mater there must be used both wisdome, courage, and spede." —
Throckmorton, it is to be observed, was at this time the most confidential
friend of Cecil, and in despatches from France, pressed the adoption of these
measures which the Secretary had recommended to the Queen and Council ;
of course the reference is, to Throckmorton's Letters in Forbes's Collection. It
is not to be denied, that the passages cited above are there to be found ; but if
they are to be considered as direct proofs of a combination between Throck-
morton and Cecil, to deprive Mary of her Scottish crown, we ought not to
overlook a proof, which the same Collection supplies, of its being rather a
French than an English expedient ; how far sincerely so, we pretend not to
say, but it is very certain, that in Forbes's Collection there is to be seen a letter
from Throckmorton to Queen Elizabeth, dated from Amboise, May 4, 1560,
and indorsed by Cecil himself, in which her Majesty is advertised, that a
special messenger or minister is about to be sent to her from the French Court,
a Monsieur de Randon. The account of this mission, is too important to be
passed over ; as tending to exculpate both Throckmorton and Cecil, from any
violent design to wrest the Scottish crown from the French Queen (for so Mary
was at the time).
'' According to my last, Monsieur de Randon doth presentlie repaire to your
Majesty. He is a faire spoken man, brother to the Conte Rochefokawe, and to
the Abbot of Cormery (who ruleth altogether the Cardinal of Lorrain) and a
good courtesan, very well esteemed in this Court, and of the faction of Guise.
The chief cause of his coming is, as I am enformed, upon the newes they have
here, that Lieth is wonne (whereby they take ther things in Scotland, and such
216 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
as may be prisoners ther to be in evill case) to treate with your Majesty
touching the same) and for some good ende to be made betweene your Majesty
and Fraunce. Nevertheles it is also shewed me, that he hath farther com-
mission ; and amongs other things, to offer unto your Majesty the realme of
Scotland to be annexed to England, so as your Highnes do mary with the
erle of Arraine : in which case, they will cause the Frenche Quene to renounce
her title to Scotland for ever, in recompence whereof they will require to have
at your Majesty's handes the renunciation of your title to Fraunce, to Calice,
and the claime both of the money to be forfaite for default of rendition of
Calice, and to all pensions, arreragis, and other droicts dew to your Majesty,
and your realme by Fraunce, and to make a treatie and alliaunce with your
Majesty ; and for satisfaction of the Frenche Quene, to graunt, that in case the
King dye, she shall have as much dowry as the revenue of the realme of
Scotland cometh to. And as I do not easely beleave, the French wilLoffer any
"thing so moche to your Majestys commodity as this is ; which I wishe ; so if
any such thinge be indeed offered, it shall not, in niy simple opinion, be amisse
by all meanes to keep the same from the knowledge of the King of Spaine his
Ministers and favorers there."
From Cecil's Journal it appears that M. de Randon was sent to England at
this precise time ; but that he ever made the proposals alluded to does not
appear. He came, to use the very words of the Journal (or notes of Elizabeth's
reign), " to joyn with de Valence to go into Scotland, and brought commissions
for themselves, and Bp. of Amiens and d'Oyzell." This was about the space
of four-and-twenty days only before Sir William Cecil himself and Dr. Wotton
set out for Scotland, as Elizabeth's Ministers, to treat for peace ; consequently
before the Treaty of Edinburgh, and might therefore accord with the Queen's
declaration to Lord Shrewsbury, alluded to, that " before the Treaty of Edinburgh
there was an intent discovered to deprive her (Queen Mary) of her crown, which
she (Elizabeth) utterly rejected." She says indeed it was discovered to her by
Lethington, but let it have been discovered to her by whom it would, or devised
by whom it might, it would seem from what Throckmorton writes of M.
Randon, one of the very faction of Guise, that some project to that effect had
been entertained in France, not perhaps with much sincerity, but in consequence
of the " evil case " in which their affairs seemed to stand in Scotland. As to
Arran himself, whether we look to England or to France, there might appear
at that time to be a very fair chance of his ascending the Scottish throne, not
, i t . . •
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 217
only through the failure of issue between Francis and Mary, but through the
early demise of the latter, who, from Throckmorton's letters, appears, at the
time of Elizabeth's accession, and first years of her reign, to have been in a
state of health almost as delicate as Francis himself. In May, 1559, he writes
to the Secretary, giving an account of his reception at the French Court : "The
Scottishe Quene and this King's sister were absent : whome we have not seen
as yet, for that (as it is said) they be sumwhat sickly ;" and in a postscript to
the same letter, after he had seen Mary, " Assuredly, Sir, the Scottishe Quene
in myne opinion looketh very ill, very pale and grene, and therewithall short-
breathed ; and it is whispered here amongs them, that she cannot live long."
In the next letter to the Queen herself, describing also his reception at Court,
and his interview with Catherine de Medicis and her three daughters, he adds,
" The Quene of Scotts being not there, for that she is sicklye." Many times
after he speaks of her suffering from fainting fits, and once at Notre Dame, as
being so ill, as " to keep her from sounding,* they were fayne to bring her
wine from the altar, and in dede I never sawe her loke so yll, and as well the
Scottishemen as Frenchmen doo much mistrust, that she cannot long continue."
And in a letter to Elizabeth, August 25, 1559, he mentions a report made to
him by the Spanish Ambassador at the French Court, of her being so weak as
to faint f in the Presence Chamber, being only revived by strong cordials. J It
is no wonder therefore that the eyes of Elizabeth's Ministers should have been
fixed on the Earl of Arran, as a proper match for their Sovereign ; and that
Throckmorton should have written to Elizabeth on the very day in which he
had had the above communication with the Spanish Ambassador, "I wolde
* Forbes, i. 144. t Forbes, i. 210—244, &c.
J On the 19th of December, 1559, she had a very narrow escape for her life, by a fall in
hunting. The following is the account of the accident sent to Elizabeth from France, by her
envoys, Killegrew and Jones : —
" On the xixth of this present there happened a marvellous chance and escape to the French
Queen : who riding on hunting, and following the hart of force, was in her course cast off her
gelding by a bough of a tree, and by the suddenness of the fall, was not able to call for help ; and
albeit there did follow her divers gentlemen and ladies of her chamber, yet three or four passed
over her before she was espied, and some of their horses rode so near her, that her hood was
trodden off. As soon as she was raised from the ground, she spake, and said that she felt no
hurt, and herself began to set her hair, and dress up her head, and so returned to the Court ;
where she kept her chamber till the King removed. She feeleth no incommodity by her fall,
and yet she has determined to change that kind of exercise." — Forbes, j. 290.
VOL. II. 2 F
218 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
wyshe your Majestic should honorablye and very graciously receive the Earl
of Arran in your Court : gavynge hime as good hope as any other (for yf
he be the same that they here report of him, he is as well worthy as any
other.)" And again, to prevent her delivering him up to the French, " Yf the
Earl of Arran were not of so great importance as he is, in no wyse he is to be
delivered; as I amsuer, your Majeste dothe well consyder."*
If we put these things together, we shall see how different a case may
be made out, from that which the constant enemies of Elizabeth, and her great
Minister, Cecil, have so warmly insisted upon, and with little or no denial of the
facts adduced. That there were rumours afloat of Murray's design to usurp the
throne of Mary, is, probably, true ; but if not first broached by the French, or by
the Queen Regent in Scotland, which seems capable of proof, | chiefly encouraged
by them, in order to afford a fair pretence for augmenting their forces in that
country. That a match between Elizabeth and Arran was contemplated by Eliza-
beth's Ministers may be true, but upon a supposition that, being presumptive
heir to Mary, he might ascend the Scottish throne through default of issue
from her and Francis, or by the premature death of Mary herself, an event
much expected, as we have shewn, from the apparent delicacy of her consti-
tution. That a project was on foot even to raise Arran to the Scottish throne
during Mary's life may be true, but not by violence ; possibly by such offers
made to France as might induce that Court to procure from Mary a peaceable
resignation of her crown, or by proposals from the French themselves, such as
Throckmorton reported as likely to be made by M. Randon, and by which, had
Mary died young, as was undoubtedly expected, France would have gained
great advantages. That France had speculated upon the probability of Mary's
early death is plain, from Throckmorton's letter to the Queen, Nov. 29, 1559.—
Forbes, i. 269.
But to let these things pass, it is very certain, as we have before intimated,
that Mary's passage to Scotland, through England, was never unconditionally
refused. If she would but previously ratify and confirm the Treaty of Edin-
burgh, she was not only to be permitted to pass free, but to receive all becoming
and suitable attentions, and be with due honours forwarded on her way. What
great pains were taken to induce her to do so before she sailed are evident
from Lord Burghley's own notes. On January 5th, one month only after the
* Forbes, i. 215, 216, &c. f See McCrie, i. 443. Knox and Forbes, i. 180.
1561.] , MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 219
death of Francis, she was solicited to that effect by Sir Peter Meutas,* sent from
Elizabeth. On the 23d, the Earl of Bedford was dispatched to co-operate with
Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in the same demand, which, on the 1 9th of February,
was again declined. In March, Lord James went to her; and on the 10th
of April, Throckmorton wrote three several letters to Mary, the Cardinal Lor-
rain, and the Lord James, to press the ratification. In June, Mr. Somer was
sent upon the same errand, and the demand repeated by him and Throckmorton,
and again finally on the llth of August, but still refused or deferred. On the
15th of the same month she arrived at Calais to embark for Scotland. Having
to the last thus refused to ratify that memorable treaty (Cecil's own treaty, as it
might justly be called), Elizabeth's situation was rendered very precarious, as
well as that of the Scottish Protestants or reformed party.f Some advantages
to both might have been obtained, by apprising Mary of the exact state of her
hereditary dominions before she arrived there; and if the alleged design of
intercepting her is to be credited, it might assuredly have been for no worse ends
or purposes than those we have suggested. We may learn from Elizabeth's
instructions to Randolph, already cited, how much there was to communicate to
Mary, when once out of the hands of the Guises, conducive to the best interests
of both countries and the safety of both Queens. Camden's account of
the design to intercept her on her passage is as follows : — " In the meantime
the Queen of Scots, having gotten a fit opportunity, set sail from Calice and
arrived in Scotland, passing by the English ships in foggy weather, which
ships, some thought, were sent to do her honour by wafting her over ; others, to
suppress pirates ; and others thought they were sent to intercept her ; for James,
the Bastard, having returned from France through England, gave advices
underhand to intercept her, both for Elizabeth's security and the interest of
religion. Lethington," he adds, " advised the same thing, lest, if she should
return, she should raise wonderful tragedies, cut off their intercourse with the
English, and depress the factions that favoured them." What Murray had
learned in France does not appear, nor what he communicated to Elizabeth or
her Ministers as motives for intercepting her ; but it is not to be doubted that
Mary was coming out of very bad hands, as far as regarded the liberties
of Scotland, Elizabeth's title to the crown of England, and the reformed religion
in both countries ; and Murray and Lethington had, above most others, cause to
* See before, pp. 197, 198. t See Camden.
220 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
apprehend her resentment. Camden's expression, " if she should return," is too
unqualified. The precise feeling of the parties is more truly to be ascertained
from the letters that passed between Lethington and Cecil, and between Ran-
dolph and Cecil ; the former writes as follows : — " I have been these forty days
in the North parts with my Lord James (Murray), where we have not been alto-
together unoccupied, but advancing the religion and the common cause. I do
allow your opinion of the Queen, our Sovereign's, journey to Scotland, whose
coming hither, if she be enemy to the religion, and so affected towards that
realm as she yet appeareth, shall not fail to raise wonderful tragedies. She will
not be served by those who bear any good will to England : some quarrel shall
be picked with them, not directly for religion at first, but when the accusation
for heresy would be odious, men must be charged with treason. The like
of this, in that realm, I think, hath been seen in Queen Mary's days ; a few
number thus disgraced, dispatched, or dispersed, the rest will be an easy prey,
and then may the butchery of Boner plainly begin." This letter has been said
plainly to shew a confederacy to disturb the government. Not so, if Mary
would but have accepted the Treaty of Edinburgh, or listened to advice which the
actual state of Scotland would have justified. Randolph's letters to Cecil have
been also adduced in proof of an actual conspiracy, not only to intercept, but im-
prison her, that the government might fall into the hands of Murray, Morton, &c.
" I have shewn your Honor's letter unto the Lord James, Lord Morton, and
Lethington: they wish, as your Honour doth, that she (Mary) might be stayed
yet for a space ; and if it were not for their obedience sake, some of them care
not though they never saw her face. They have need to look to themselves, for
their danger is great." To obviate that danger, not by totally preventing
her return, but delaying it, to afford time for explanation, could not be
unreasonable. There are, however, other passages in Lethington 's letter, cited
above, which should not be passed over, as they too generally seem to be by the
advocates of Mary. " 1 make not this discourse as our meaning to debar her
Majesty from her kingdom, or that we would wish she should never come home
(for that were the part of an unnatural subject), but rather desiring such things
as be necessary so to be provided for in the mean time, that neither she, by
following the wicked device of God's enemies, to lose the hearts of her subjects,
neither yet so many as tender the glory of God and liberties of their native
country, to be the sons of death. I assure you this whole realm is in a miserable
case : if the Queen, our Sovereign, come shortly home, the dangers be evident
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 221
and many ; and if she shall not come, it is not without great peril — her absence to
us is most pernicious ; thus, whether she come or not, we are in a great strait/'
In a letter to be seen in Haynes, 369, from Lethington to Cecil, and written only
ten days before the Queen's arrival, expressing his fears that the intercourse
between the two countries might be put an end to by Mary, he writes, " I can
never change , opinion that this intelligence (intercourse) can nevar be put
. in securitie, oneless the Queen my Sovarayn, by some meanes, may be per-
swaded to enter into it." And that such means should be resorted to with as
little delay as possible, temporizing being greatly dangerous to the Reformists,
he reminds him of the Latin proverb, multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque
labra, and of the philosopher's engagement to make a mule speak to please his
Emperor, while nothing was more likely than that before the time run out, the
mule, or the philosopher, or the Emperor might die. It is not improbable that
the predicament, into which they might be brought by Mary's sudden return
from the Continent, should any thing befal Francis, was foreseen when the first
Confederation took place. It being at that time made one of the. leading articles
of the agreement, that Elizabeth should take into her protection the realm
of Scotland (the Duke of Chatelherault being declared heir apparent thereof by
the Scottish Parliament), only for the preservation of the same (the nobility and
subjects thereof), in their old freedoms and liberties, from conquest by the French,
as a Christian realm in the profession of the true religion, during the time that
the marriage betwixt the Queen of Scots and the French King shall continue,
and one year after,* or " until further order may be had betwixt both the realms for
.peace and concord." As the Treaty of Edinburgh was subsequent to this, it was
reasonable to offer it as the basis of a fresh agreement between the countries on
the death of Francis II. It is very fairly to be concluded, that Mary's Scottish
subjects, not excepting the Congregationists, were loyal in their hearts, and that
if she would but have consented to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, England had
no design to shake their loyalty or injure their Sovereign. And yet it has been un-
justly, rudely, and very calumniously asserted, as a case scarcely admitting of dis-
pute, that if she could have been intercepted by Elizabeth on her way from France,
to Scotland, she would infallibly have been deprived of her crown, if not of her life.
* Haynes, 253. The whole is directed against the French, and worth reading. See also the
letter from the Queen to the Duke of Norfolk, March 19, 1559, where the scope of her proceed-
ings is said to be to preserve, first, the kingdom of Scotland from conquest, and, secondly, Eng-
land from invasion by France.
•222 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
" The Queen," says Goodall, in his usual passionate manner, " arrived safely
in Scotland upon the xixth day of August, MDLXI., notwithstanding all their
anxiety to intercept her ; but when she came, she found that no suitable prepa-
rations had been made for her reception ; because the persons who at that time
took the management of affairs upon them were in hopes that she would never
come, but fall into the hands of the English, to be MURDERED by them at that
time," vol. i. 174. This is the very author who, but a few pages before, speaks
with the utmost resentment of certain reports against the French Court (or Guisian
party, — see Cook on the Reformation), for having poisoned the Scottish Commis-
sioners, a thing very much credited at the time, though Goodall speaks of this
charge against that Court as a " vile calumny and scandalous aspersion upon
persons who, for any thing that appears, were both too great, and too good,
to have been guilty of an action so wicked and unmanly ;" and yet some of these
very great and good persons were afterwards concerned in the horrible massacre
of St. Bartholomew, 1572 (not to mention that of Vassi, ten years before), as he
must have known ; and what is more to the purpose, perhaps, not many
months before Mary left France, had sent Commissioners to Scotland to appre-
hend the Earl of Arran, presumptive heir to the crown, " with grete severite
and extremity, and to bring him back to France either quicke or dead." We are
not seeking to vindicate the doings or state craft of the sixteenth century, but to
save our own country and countrymen from the odium of charges manifestly
partial, and which would apply, if not in a greater degree, at least equally,
to others. After all, had such murderous purposes been really entertained, what
could have been easier than to have said not a word about the Treaty of Edinburgh,
but to have encouraged Mary to pass over to England and then detained her 1 Such
conduct would not have been more atrocious than what has been most unreason-
ably laid to the charge of Elizabeth and her Ministers. What Murray reported
was, perhaps, the very reason of their endeavouring so earnestly to procure her
ratification of the Treaty, as the only ground upon which there could be any fair
expectation of a firm amity between the two kingdoms and their two Sovereigns.
Mary, after a passage rendered for ever memorable and peculiarly interesting
by the pen of Brantome, who was on board the same ship, and witnessed all that
passed, arrived safely, and without interruption, in her native country, to the
possession of her regal inheritance, and occupation of her own dominions. It is
impossible to read the account referred to without feeling deeply for the young
Queen, constrained by the death of her husband, Francis II., and the ill-will or
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 223
jealousies of her mother-in-law, Catherine de Medicis, and, probably, urged by
her uncles, ambitious of securing their own power in Scotland, to quit the place
of her early education and youthful sovereignty, a kingdom comparatively
refined, and to pass to her own gloomy, unrefined kingdom of Scotland ; we may
well admire the tears she is said so feelingly to have shed when France could be
no longer discerned from the deck of the ship that bore her away from all she
4hen held dear, and when her doom was fixed, to pass into a country totally
strange to her, and to rule over a divided people.* It is absurd to attribute all
Mary's misfortunes to the enmity and jealousy of any rival Sovereign : her
destiny was dark and gloomy from the moment of her birth, if we regard only
her temporal condition. We know that, according to her own principles, she
died devoutly and heroically, and may therefore well hope, that she has long been
at rest ; but that she had no hope of rest as Queen of Scotland, from the first
moment of her widowhood, as the relict of Francis II. of France, it would be
rash to deny. If her enemies were not her best friends (as perhaps might
in some instances be shewn), it is most certain, that, as to the issue of things, her
friends were her worst enemies ; her mother first split upon the rock, through her
near connexion with the Guises, and, under the same pilotage, her daughter
could not be expected to escape. It was not English, but French interference,
and indiscretions on her part, which we shall have to discuss hereafter, that
brought on her the calamities which every sensible mind must to the end
of time deplore.
It was, as we have already said, on the 19th of August, 1561,f in the tenth
month of the third year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, that Mary arrived
safely in her own Scottish dominions. We have seen what had been passing in
France, to give umbrage to Elizabeth prior to this event, and the pains taken,
* Mad"e, de Keralio has admirably described, after Brantome, the melancholy condition of Mary
on her passage to Scotland : — " Elle quittoit, avec deplaisir, des oncles qui avoient pris soin de
son Enfance, une nation polieetspirituelle, un climat heureux pourhabiter un pays sterile, et regner
sur des hommes grossiers, incultes comme leurs rochers. Les larmes de ceux qui 1'avoient
servie, a qui elle avoit procure un sort si doux aupres d'elle, augmenterent sa douleur. Lorsque
son vaisseau fut en pleine mer, elle fit preparer son lit sur le tillac, arm d'appercevoir les cotes de
France aussi long-temps que sa vue pourroit y atteindre : lorsqu' enfin 1'eloignement les eut fait
disparoitre, Adieu, s' ecria-t-elle en pleurant, adieu plaisant pays de France, je ne te rei'erraijamais."
f See Turner's Modern History of England, reign of Elizabeth, b. ii. ch. xx, where he notices
the very extraordinary differences amongst historians, in fixing the day of her arrival, beginning
with Knox, who states it to have been on the 19th of July.
224 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
by the Secretary in person, to set things right, and quiet the differences in
Scotland, by the Treaty of Edinburgh, and may easily therefore imagine, how
much was to be apprehended from the return of this young Catholic Queen to
her native dominions, just recovering as they were from a state of extraordinary
excitement and confusion;* the Protestant religion all but established, the
country relieved from the presence of a domineering army of foreigners (at. the
very moment when they were about to be reinforced, for the conquest probably
of both parts of the island), and a foundation laid not only for an union between
the absent Sovereign and her Protestant subjects, but between England and
Scotland.
The positive refusal of Mary to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, though on
her part a high-spirited act, and refused under the plausible pretence of waiting
to consult her Scottish subjects and counsellors, could not fail, especially as
opportunities of consulting the estates of Scotland had already been passed
over, f to excite alarm and suspicion in the breasts of all who had engaged in
the late revolution, and to put Elizabeth on her guard. England had taken her
part in the struggle — she was decidedly on the side of the Reformists, or, I
should rather say, of the Reformation ; for, individually, the Reformists themselves
could be no great favourites. In Elizabeth's eyes, they could not have appeared
to stand quite clear of the crime of rebellion — Knox had rendered himself, by
his writings and Genevan principles, quite obnoxious to her J — Murray had no
tie upon her, but as a leader of the reformed party — she had refused the hand
of Arran, who stood in the right line to the throne — and if Lethington should
* For an account of the state of Scotland, at the period of Mary's arrival, see Robertson,
McCrie's Life of Knox, ii. 21, 22—28, &c.
t They had been assembled once or twice since the death of Francis. [Camden.] The same
author, says, the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh had been promised by Mary, both
under her hand, and by word of mouth. Mary's excuse was, " As for the Treaty of Edinborough,
it was made in the K. my husbands Life-time, whom I was to obey in all things, as in duty I
ought; whereas he deferred the confirmation thereof, let the blame lie upon him, and not upon
me."— 51, 52.
t See Cook on the Treaty of Berwick, history of the Reformation in Scotland, 1560 : he parti-
cularly notices the fact, that the Lords of the Congregation, in negotiating with Elizabeth, were
very careful to insert the most solemn and explicit declarations of their loyalty to their Queen,
" It being probable," he adds, " that without assurances upon this point, Elizabeth would have
refused to extend to them her support ;" and he refers to Knoxs History of the Treaty, to prove
that he was not hostile to monarchical government, or a fomenter of sedition. — Vol. ii. 254, 255,
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 225
appear to have gained her confidence, it could only be on account of his talents,
and what Cecil oddly enough calls his honesty, but which, in fact, was his
steadiness to the cause of the Reformation, and opposition to French influence.
The Treaty of Edinburgh seemed to have accomplished three great points :—
the recognition, on the parts of the French and Scots, of Elizabeth's title ;
security for the Reformists, and for the liberties of Scotland ; and a wholesome
•check upon all foreign influence, as inimical to the independence and true
interests of both countries.
We have already observed that every grace, virtue, or accomplishment Mary
possessed, must, in the natural course of things, have operated against her in the
mind of Elizabeth. Authors have dwelt largely upon her youth at this time,
being only nineteen ; but Elizabeth herself was under thirty, — an age when,
without such inordinate vanity as has been imputed to the English Sovereign,
any woman may be allowed to consider herself to be in the prime of life. In
the struggle between these two great rivals, Mary lost her life, and Elizabeth her
character. The former will never want friends and advocates; but we feel bound
to declare, that Elizabeth's enemies appear to us to have, in many instances,
expected more from her, than is consistent with the most common failings and
infirmities of human nature. It has been observed, that she was often more
than man, and sometimes less than woman ; but, to say the truth, we incline to
think she must have been more than woman, we will not say, to love, but almost
not to hate Mary; for the latter, with manners much more soft and amiable, had
yet a spirit equal to her own, and pretensions to the English throne most royal
and respectable. We all know the character of Elizabeth, as a Princess of
exalted spirit, and great personal vanity. Let us then compare the character
of Mary, as it is drawn by her rude, but learned, advocate Whitaker, and from
thence judge, how impossible it must have been for two such women cordially to
love each other, or, indeed, not to be at variance, under the trying circumstances
in which they were severally placed ; a variance having never less than the
dethronement of each other to keep it alive ; for the longer Mary sat on the
Scottish throne, the more jealous she became of Elizabeth, and had she ever
become despotic there, there can be little doubt but that, with the aid of the
French, she would have done what she could to obtain possession of both crowns.
And we should also bear in mind that, according to the spirit, temper, and
practice of those sad times, whenever a crown was in competition, life was in
danger. Mary fell, and fell so as to be ever since universally commiserated, and
VOL. II. 2 G
220 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [156L
almost canonized,* as entirely the victim of Elizabeth's passions. The constant
and incessant danger of Elizabeth's falling all the while, is almost as invariably
overlooked ; and the very unpleasant necessity to which her Ministers were often
driven, of intriguing against intrigue, to save her, sadly underrated — what did
happen, all know ; what did not happen, is seldom taken into consideration. It
is not our business to defend, disguise, or palliate what came to pass, but to
find out, if we can, how it came to pass, in regard to which many things appear
to have been overlooked, suppressed, distorted, or never sufficiently brought
forward : but to return —
When Mary quitted France to rule her own dominions, not merely contiguous
to those of Elizabeth, but forming with them one island, it must be allowed that
she possessed every possible advantage against the latter, if she should be able
to establish herself there, to the utmost extent of her own natural wishes and
desires, of the views and expectations of her foreign natural relatives, and of
the Romish party in general. It was impossible to suppose she could be friendly
to the Reformation, either in Scotland or England : it was impossible, on this
very account, that she should feel no resentment against those who had, with
* Of this we could scarcely adduce a greater proof, than in the following passage from
Goodall's preface, considering that some of the gravest writers, and most accurate historians, have
not scrupled to assert, that there can be no reasonable cause to doubt that " she was a bad
woman, and a bad Queen." — See Biog. Brit. art. Buchanan, note 5. We do not wish to injure her
credit by what we cite, but to uphold the injured credit of others. Mr. Goodall then has ventured
to introduce the following account of Mary into the preface of his well-known Examination. We
are persuaded Mary herself, if she could have been alive to read it, would have been tempted to
cry out, " Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribos istis."
" For whatever has been said to the disparagement of that Princess, or whoever said it, signifies
nothing; for MARY, Queen of SCOTS, so far excelled all other Sovereign Princes who ever yet
appeared on the face of the earth, that, as if she had not been of mortal nature, all the acts and
contrivances of her numerous and malicious enemies have not availed to fix upon her one crime,
shall I say, nay, not one single foible, either while on the throne, or in the jail, from her
cradle to her grave, unless the want of omniscience, or omnipotence, shall be reckoned in her a
defect. This is the very truth ; ajad this, can and shall be made manifest, to the admiration and
satisfaction of all good men, and to the shame and confusion of all others, who shall ever, in time
coming, dare to gainsay." It may be judged from this, how invidious a task we have undertaken,
in the face of such a warning ; for we must question some parts of the above high-flown panegyric,
not as the willing adversaries of Mary, but as the faithful biographers of that great man, to whose
hands were committed the defence of Elizabeth, of the Protestant Church, and probably the
whole island of Cireat Britain from foreign dominion and renewed Papal tyranny.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 227
arms in their hands, not only resisted, but overthrown the influence of her
J^F," rtiy;f ", S°ud°ing' C°Urted' and reCdVed' the ""PPortof her great
ival Elizabeth (for such she was by the mere assumption of the crown of England)
whom she had been taught to regard as an illegitimate pretender to royalty, an
usurper of the third throne to which she herself seemed to be called by her birth
and descent ; and, with these feelings, which we may well conceive to be too
strong to be so easily compromised, as some have pretended, she seemed to have
every personal accomplishment necessary to carry into execution all her plans
against Elizabeth, and the Protestant party, in her own country. Whitaker's
account of her then is as follows: "She was young, beautiful, and accomplished
-she had already sat upon the throne of France ; she there became the centre of
a large circle ; she was the peculiar ornament of one of the politest Courts of
Europe but her soul was superior even to such a state of admiration as this
This had charms to gratify the generality of female minds, to the utmost extent
of their wishes. Mary's ambition was of a more exalted kind. She wished to
appear as a woman of intellect, and to be considered as a woman of taste The
strength of her talents fitted her well for the one: the high polish which had
been given them, calculated her eminently for the other. She therefore shone
equally m the drawing-room and the closet, in the necessary formalities of state
in the mental intercourses of life, and, super-added to all these qualities she
had, what is scarcely ever united with them, a native firmness of resolution "
To those who understand the common frailties and infirmities of human
nature, it will surely appear that this extraordinary woman must have been as a
thorn in the s.de of Elizabeth, the most sharp and piercing that could well be
imagined ; but in addition to all these personal advantages, when placed in com-
;ition with the high-spirited, talented, and vain Elizabeth, it may be added
that, politically speaking, beyond the confines of the British island, Elizabeth was
almost destitute of friends, or where she had any, they formed only a minority ;
while Mary, on the score of religion, must have had, on her side, all the
Catholics of Europe, not excepting those of England itself, as she herself had
intimated to Throckmorton. Elizabeth having, ultimately, and, as it is alleged
tins day, cruelly prevailed over her interesting competitor, it seems to have
been too generally supposed, that the former possessed a superiority that ren-
Mary an easy prey, and that the mares that were laid, were all on one
side ; that, in fact, it was altogether a contest between craft and innocence,
pride and humility, power and weakness, manly hardihood and feminine softness.
22a MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. " [1561.
We confess the course of our investigations has brought us to a very different
conclusion. To say the least, we think there were, on both sides, as far as the
two Queens were concerned, frequent deception and much pride, and on neither
side any weakness of mind or understanding, or any want of manly forUtude;
and that the one who escaped, only escaped by affording no sufficient opportu-
nities to the adverse party. If the victory were not altogether honestly or
creditably gained, which we should be sorry to be expected to prove, yet we are
very much inclined to think it was fully as much so as would have been the case
under the other alternative. If we were even to go so far, as m the very outset
of this horrible contest, for the outset or commencement requires as great consi-
deration as the end, to grant that, at the least, * judicial or forensic murder was
ultimately committed, we expect to have no difficulty to shew that, on the other
side, murder was escaped, and only very narrowly escaped, in a variety .
instances.
On Mary's arrival in Scotland, she acted so contrary to what might have bee
expected, that it would be scarcely possible to acquit her of much art and
subtlety ; or, at the least, of that dissembling policy which seemed to pervade
Europe. ' She took into her confidence, to all appearance, one of the prime
leaders of the Reformed party, a supposed pretender to her crown, and the
very person against whom she had been most cautioned by Leslie, the envoy of
her Catholic subjects. This was no less than the Prior of St. Andrew's, the
Lord James Stuart, her natural brother. It could not have happened by the
advice of her relatives of Lorrain, except as a blind to throw the Reformists off
their guard, leave no immediate opening to Elizabeth to interfere, and thereby
gain time for future better opportunities to pursue her own will.
' How consistent this is with the view taken of the matter by the author of the
Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth (after Rapin) is very evident from the
following passage : " The haughtiness with which Mary talked to the English
Ambassador before she left France, was not only unsuitable to her present
circumstances, but contrary to her measures, and the projects she had formed
with her uncles. Whilst Francis II. was alive, these Princes believed that
the forces of France would be sufficient to subdue Scotland, under pretence of
extirpating heresy ; and afterwards, in conjunction with the Scottish troops, it
would be easy to enter England, and, with the assistance of the English
Catholics, dethrone Elizabeth. But the war they had excited in Scotland
taking a very different turn from what they had expected, and the death of
229
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
Francis following immediately upon it, they found that other measures were to
be taken, and the execution of their project deferred for some time. They
therefore advised the Queen, their niece, voluntarily to quit the title of Queen
of England, to return into Scotland, to enter if possible into a strict friendship
with Elizabeth, to endeavour to be declared her presumptive heir, and under
colour of that correspondence to form a party in England, where was no want
of malecontents to be serviceable on occasion. The whole course of this history
shews this to have been Mary's plan." We would not deny to Mary or her
friends the right of dissembling, as well as others, in such an age of state-era//,
and concealed designs ; and we must admire the able manner in which, at that
early age, she so conducted herself as in no small degree to accomplish the
purposes intended. The Protestant Lords were apparently thrown off their
guard, Elizabeth quieted, and time gained, while her uncles were too busy in
France to help her, had she thrown off the mask too soon ; we shall transcribe
Melvii's account of the state of things on Mary's first coming over : " Her
Majesty's returning was gladly welcomed by the whole subjects. For at first,
following the counsel of her friends, she behaved herself humanely to them all,'
committing the chief handling of her affairs unto her brother, the Prior of St.'
Andrew's, who mafterwards she made Earl of Murray, and to the Secretary
Lidington, as meetest both to hold the country at her devotion, and also to
beget a strict friendship between her Majesty and the Queen of England. For
my Lord Murray had great credit with my Lord Robert Dudley, who was
afterward made Earl of Leicester; and the Secretary Lidington had great credit
with the Secretary Cecil, so that these four made a strict and sisterly friendship
between the two Queens and their countries ; so that there appeared outwardly
no more difference but that the Queen of England was the elder sister, and the
Queen of Scotland the younger, whom the Queen of England promised to
declare the second person according to her good behaviour ; so that letters and
correspondence passed weekly between them : and at first there appeared
nothing more desired by either of them, than that they might see one another,
by a meeting at a convenient place, whereby they might also declare their
hearty and loving minds to each other : for our Queen was so nettled with the
hard usage she had met with from the Queen Mother of France, who had
likewise hardly used all her friends of the house of Guise, that she was the
more earnest to make friends with her, and with such whom she knew that
Queen liked worst."
2UO
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
In many particulars this seems to be a pretty true account ; that is, as to the
outward agreement and familiarity of the two Queens, though oddly enough
referred by Melvil to Mary's dislike to a third Queen, the celebrated Catherine
de Medicis. In the meanwhile there was one in Scotland who seems to have
been not deluded by any of these outward courtesies and pretended friendships,
but to have been entirely suspicious of them from the beginning.* On the
7th of October, 1561, we find him (Knox) writing his mind pretty freely to
Cecil, and in a style of remonstrance almost against the Secretary himself,
for being too ready to trust Mary's attentions to the Reformists.! We can
only extract a few passages. " That our Queen shall be allured by any such
meanes as we yit use, is altogidther contrary to my judgment ; for now
she feareth not to sett furth Proclamations contrary to those that command
hoormongers, adulterars, and idolaters to be punished, according to the former
and established reformation. The Papists I grant blowe the belloss, but the
faintness of some, flattery of others, and corrupt affections of such as ought to
withstand such attemptes, are like shortly to destroy the face of that building,
which God by his power had founded amongs us. This I write from the dolor
of heart. Some of no small estimation have said with oppen mouth, The
Queen neyther is, neyther shall be of our opinion ; and in very deed hir hole
proceedings do declayr that the Cardinally s lessons are so deaplie printed in
hir hart, that the substance and the qualitie are like to perish together. I wold
be glad to be deceaved, but I fear I shall not. In communication with her I
espyed such craft, as I have not found in such aige — since hath the Court been
.
* We cannot help thinking that Knox's suspicions were correct. We can never bring ourselves
to believe that a true Romanist or Catholic (to use the more common term) can be tolerant as to '
other modes of faith. It must be inconsistent with their sworn obedience and submission to an
infallible judge. And yet Mary, by her first appointments on her return to Scotland, has the
credit given her of tolerant principles beyond all bounds. "Elle fut," says Mad"', de Keralio, " la
seule en Europe qui donna le grand exemple de la tolerance. Convaincu de sa religion, elle
n' ordonna point a ses sujets de penser comme elle, et n' exiga de leur complaisance que la
permission de suivre le culte approuve par sa raison." — She thinks that the opposition of the
Protestants, " Fit perdre aux ecossois le plus beau Regne qu' ils eussent pu voir depuis 1' origine
de la monarchic."
f This may, I think, be concluded from the beginning of his letter. " If God had not so often
(right worshipfull) trapped the men of most singular experience in there owen wisdome, when thei
have begun mor to credit there owen ymaginations, than the will of God manifestly revealed, I
wold have judged your counsill most holsome."
1661.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 231
dead to me, and I to it." — In the end he complains particularly of the Lord
James and Lethington.*
Lethington, on the very same day, Oct. 7, 1561, wrote himself to Cecil, a.
very sensible letter, in defence of the Queen of Scots' title to the crown of Eng-
land after Elizabeth, and as it appears from Lord Burghley's Notes, that he had
been at the English Court in the preceding monthf (sent thither by Mary), the
letter is rather to be regarded as a continuation of the communications he had
held with the Secretary (and indeed with the Queen herself) at that time — in
this letter he gives the following description of Mary : " I find in the Quene, my
maistress, a good disposition to quietness ; but I see therewithal joyned a carefull
regard to her owne estate, and soche a courage as wilbe loth to forego her
ryght ;" and again, " The Quene, my Maistress, is descended of the blood off
England, and so off the race off the Lyon on both sydes ; I fear she cold rather
be content to haserd all (soche is her courage) than receave that dishonour to
forego her ryght." He makes an apt allusion to the case of Henry VIII.
and James V., as related in our first Volume. " I have been, by many who
lived in those days, credibly informed, that yf the two Kyngs had met at Yorke,
as was ones thought, Kyng Henry was fully determined to limit the succession
of his Crqwne to our Soverayne his Nevew, which be like may serve her Hygh-
ness for a precedent ; and if he being irritat for the breache off that appoynt-
* We are aware that this is judged to be a very harsh and severe interpretation of Mary's
purposes. Many friends to the Reformation in Scotland are willing to acquit her of all duplicity,
except on the score of religion. See Cook, vol. iii. 62, 63. And we ourselves are certainly not
disposed to accuse her of any further dissimulation at this time, than is to be referred to the
contradiction between her principles and her actions — her foreign relations, and her Scottish
Ministry — certain it is, that, at all events, she tempered her Catholic zeal so discreetly, that if
Knox were right, the ablest men in both kingdoms were likely to become her dupes, as his letter
seems to shew ; for he certainly includes Cecil himself in the number of those whom God ap-
peared to have " trapped in their own wisdom," and probably through too great a reliance on Lord
James and Lethington, and a too fond expectation of bringing Mary in time to abandon the
Romish religion by their Scottish and English allurements. Mary, on her return to Scotland,
stood much in the situation of her mother, who, a few years before, had been advised by her
family to " tokrate for a time, till they should overcome their difficulties in France, and take order
accordingly." — Forbes. " Bictomcourt," says Throekmorton, in a letter to Cecil, dated July 26,
1559, " which I think passed through to England, had in charge to will the Queen Dowager of
Scotland to conform herself to the Scots proceedings in religion, and to dissemble with them,
supposing that to be the best means to work their purposes." — i. p. 183.
t Sept. 9, 1561. " Lyddyngton came from the Scots' Queen into England."
MS MEMOIRS OF LORD BURSHLEY. [1661
men,, did any thing prejudicial! to his Neve, what
'"
'l Id *> a good success." Here, then, we have t»o
Ma Hkey above everting, to strike the mind of C*U. First,
y to her Gl« principles- creditable to herself as
te ,Knox to her « prncpes
p nc p Hf religious and family feeling, but highly dangerous to the Re-
fe Son m Scortand and England; and the testimony of Lethmgton to her
"
m coan
m maintaining her rights, which Cecil mns, have known she could
ey Ml, -cording to the very same religious and fam.ly feelmgs, to regard
actually nvaded, by Elizabeth's occupation of the Enghsh throne; and*.
to the injury she was taught to think she had suffered through Henry s
resentment against her father.
We need not stop to consider the characters of these informants, upon winch
it is Vain to think the world, in general, will ever be agreed ; the substance c
the ir.formation is all we have to look to at present, as U regards Ceal
due given him, as to the principles and character of Mary, -^f I
true or fel.e, just or unjust, bore so .mmediatelv upon the safety of the Reformed
Church, and Elizabeth's right to the throne, that as long as they shot
* It is very remarkable, that in consequence of her kind reception in France of her natura,
brother the Lord James, and of her calling him to the government, on her return to Scotland,
it has ben concluded by an eminent foreigner (Mademoiselle A Ke^o)that Mary was qu.tepre-
pa e overlook a,l that had passed in favour of the Reformation in Scotland not to retard Us
p ±, and actually to abandon the bigoted principles of her fami.y. That ,n consequence
some ad ice her ** nether had bequeathed to her, m reference to her own harsh government
nTer later days, Mary had resolved to adopt a system of government •' tout oppose a ce «, des
GUISE!" BuUf we compare dates, Mary could scarcely be sincere in her apparent forg.veness
of her brother, who left her in May to return to Scotland; and yet in July, in her very memo-
r ble discourse with Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, she talked as freely as poss.ble of her dtsobe-
± and rtdli**, subjects in Scotland, severely taunting Eli.abeth for preferring Jter fr.endsh.p
rLrs. " Sans doute c'est pour mes sujets relies qu'elle conserve son am.t.e elle f.,t plus de
cas d'eux que de moi." This may also serve to shew, how important to the Protestants m
Scotland her ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, previous to her embarkation, rr
appeared.
156K] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 233
paramount objects of his care and attention, he could not be discharged from'the
obligation of seriously attending to it.
It is the observation of a sensible writer, that no one could be more tender on
the subject of her right to the crown, than Elizabeth; that she never failed to
resent every attack that was made upon this, from whatever quarter it came;
and although several historians have amused their readers with accounts of
her ambition to be thought more beautiful and accomplished than the Queen
Scots she was, in the estimation of the author referred to, always more
jealous of Mary as a competitor for the crown, than as a rival in personal
charms. Of this none could be more aware than Cecil ; but let the grounds of
their rivalry be what they might, that he was, at this time, averse from cementing
(if it could be accomplished) the bonds of amity and friendship between the
two countries, and the two Queens, seems plainly contradicted by another letter
ot Letlungton s, to be soon noticed.
In the mean while, every attention was paid to the defence of the kingdom
against the projects of foreign enemies, who abounded in all the states of
Europe; for Philip of Spain was against England, whenever France appeared
likely to form an union of the two kingdoms. Elizabeth, therefore, or&red
all her northern forts and castles to be repaired, kept a good fleet in constant
•eadmess, as her surest bulwark, increased the pay of the army, and that she
might be the less dependent on foreign countries for a supply of gunpowder
caused it to be made at home, while the bowels of the earth were ransacked
tor the furnishing of all useful metals.
Of the just grounds of Knox's alarm, as far as concerned the Reformation
there can be no doubt ; whatever had been accomplished towards its establishment
before the return of Mary, her reluctance, or rather positive refusal to ratify what
had passed, was sufficient to excite great distrust in a mind of much less acute
feelings than that of Knox ; but with all her temporizing at first, and which appears
undoubtedly to have beguiled many of the friends of the Reformation, she soon
adopted some measures which, in Knox's eyes, could not fail to betoken a strong
disposition to annul what had passed in favour of Protestantism; m one week
after her return (that is, on the first Sabbath), she celebrated a High Mass at the
chapel of Holyrood House, in defiance of the prohibition of the late Parliament
We cannot lament, that the strong popular resentment excited by this act of
religion on the Queen's part, was checked and appeased by the interference of
VOL. II. 2 H
2.34 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
some of the leading men among the Protestants, particularly Murray* and
Lethington ; but we must agree with Knox, that it spake volumes against the
progress of the Reformation, or the ratification of what had been achieved, in
favour of the Protestant Church. " One Mass,"t said he, in a Sermon on the
following Sabbath, " is more fearfull to me, than if ten thousand armed enemies
wer landed in ony parte of the realme, of purpose to suppresse the hole reli-
gion." Knox always felt strongly, but his foresight is not to be disputed ;
very serious consequences were to be apprehended from this one mass, as
betokening the Queen's fixed resolution, in contempt as it were of all that had
passed, to adhere to the Roman Catholic worship.
Her spirit may be admired, and her steady adherence to the religion of her
forefathers respected, but it was impossible for those who had struggled hard
for the deliverance of Scotland from the yoke of Papal bondage to suppose, that
she was not under the control of her foreign relatives, actuated by the " lessons,"
as Knox calls them, of her uncles of Lorrain, and prepared to go all lengths in
restoring the Catholic Religion. Under these circumstances, one mass, in
defiance of the decrees of a Protestant Parliament, left scarcely any hope to
the Reformists, in regard to their newly arrived Sovereign. As her manners
were fascinating, Knox plainly saw that many were disposed to yield to the
witchcraft of her smiles, regardless of the consequences to religion : at first,
with all his severity of manners, and republican principles,^ he appears himself
* Mad11', de Keralio is willing to give Murray the credit of having seen the impropriety and
indecency of preventing the Queen's performing the rites of her own religion, before he went to
France upon commission, to invite her return. Her words are these: " Son frere, le lord
James, prieur de Sainte Andre, lui fut envoye par les reformes ; mais, avant son depart, on lui
fit promettre, qu' au retour de la Reine en Ecosse, il empecheroit qu'elle fit celebrer la messe en
public, ou meme en particulier. Le lord James promit d'empecher le retablissement de la reli-
gion Catholique ; mais il dit et pensa peut-etre qu'il etoit juste de laisser a la Reine la liberte
de faire celebrer le sacrifice de la messe dans son propre palais."
t Cook iii. 69, 70.
J As to the roughness of Knox's manners, much is to be found in extenuation of it in
Dr. McCrie's able Life of that spirited Reformer, and many fair specimens are adduced of the
intemperate language of many of his contemporaries, to mark the general spirit of the times, vol. i.
note W. See also vol. li. notes Q. S. and T. ; and, indeed, we must observe, that the Popish writers
have no great right to blame him in this respect. If Knox rudely called Mary a Jezebel, to the great
offence of both Protestants and Papists, it should be recollected that Peto, afterwards Cardinal,
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 235
to have been almost beguiled ; but the infatuation did not last long ; the pro-
ceedings of the first Parliament soon again opened his eyes, and convinced him
that every thing was lost, unless he should, with the utmost stress of religious
feeling, openly protest against the proceedings of the Court. In this he seems
to have acted with a very extraordinary firmness, and though he will never be
forgiven, on the score of sensibility, for having drawn tears from the eyes of his
young and beautiful Sovereign, yet it may be questioned, whether the soundest
patriot could have done more for the real welfare of his country, or for the
conversion of his Sovereign from the corruption of a false religion to the purer
doctrines of a Reformed Church. The contrast to Mary, indeed, must have
been great ; for the austerities of the Genevan discipline, engrafted on the
unrefined manners of her Scottish subjects, must certainly have had something
revolting in them, and we are at no loss to account for the complaints which Knox
himself has recorded of the young French Queen, when she arrived amongst the
Calvinists of her native dominions. " Her comune talk," says he, " was in
secrete, that sche saw nothing in Scotland bot gravity, quilk repugned altogidder
had, not long before, called Henry VIII. an Ahab; not rudely only, but with a savage indelicacy
considering the occasion. Dr. McCrie, however, observes generally, upon the forcible style of
the early Reformers in their sermons : " It is better to be awakened with rudeness, or even by a
false alarm, than to be allowed to sleep on in the midst of danger."— vol. ii. 112. But, Randolph
and Cecil himself have been accused of glorying in the rudenesses of Knox, as furthering their
purposes against Mary; and yet Randolph, in one of his letters to Cecil, observes, "as to
Mr. Knox, I commend better the success of his doings and preachings, than the manner thereof ;"
and of the reformed preachers generally, he says, " to be plain with you, they are as wilful as
unlearned, which I lament ;" and again of Knox, " our preacher is more vehement than discreet
or learned ;" — " Knox on Sunday last gave the cross and the candle such a wipe, that those as
wise and learned as himself wished him to have held his peace." — We have spoken of his rude
likening of Mary to Jezebel, and compared it with the language of a Cardinal in calling
Henry VIII. an Ahab ; but, in the refined and Catholic kingdom of France, the language of the
pulpit, at the very same period, was in no degree less vituperative, as the following story may
serve to shew : — A preacher of the League, having chosen for the subject of his sermon the enor-
mities of Henry III. his lawful sovereign, finished his discourse in these mild and elegant terms :
" Briefly, HE" (i. e. Henry) " is a Turk in head, a German in body, an Harpy in the hands,
an Englishman in the Garter, a Pole in the feet, and a very Demon in soul." — Memoirs of the
League, vol. iii. 542. It was the violence of the preachers and clergy that first wrought upou
the, mind of Clement to emulate Jehu and Judith, in the murder of the French Holofernes (as
they did not scruple to call their King, Henry of Valois) ; and here, after all, was no difference of
religion ; for, though not a Leaguer, Henry was a true Catholic.
236 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
to her nature, for sche was brocht up in joyeusitie."* It is to be apprehended
that Scottish joyeusitie was, to Mary's taste, almost as bad as its gravity ; on the
first night after her arrival, Knox tells us, that " a company of most honest men,
with instruments of music and musicians, gave their salutations at her chamber
window. The melody, as she alleged, liked her well, and she willed the same to be
continued some nights after with great diligence:" — a strong proof, certainly, of her
great good nature and polite manners ; for, what does her more refined French
attendant Brantome say of this honest company of melodists? " And what was
worse, in the evening, at the Abbey of Edinburgh, when she wished to lie down,
there came 5 or 600 ragamuffins of the city, saluting her with some wretched
fiddles and little rebecks, which abound in this country, and began singing
Psalms as badly and discordantly as could be. Heh ! what music ! and what
a repose for her night!"
But we must leave Scotland for a time, to see what was passing at home,
where the state of the Church was as much and as constantly an object of care
and attention to the Secretary, as the state of the nation at large, in its civil and
political relations. The Bench of Bishops was now almost fully supplied with
men who, like the Secretary, had seen much of the struggles of the two or three
last reigns, and well knew, therefore, in how critical a state they stood with
regard to the credit and stability of the restored Protestant Church. It has
been well observed, that, in comparison with Mary's Bishops, " they were not
so well learned in canon law, in matters of contention about worldly contro-
versies, in bearing of temporal office and authority, in income, courtly behaviour,
and worldly pomp, as were those bishops ; yet, in all kinds of learning, manners,
and qualities, by St. Paul, in the office of a bishop required, there were found as
many learned bishops, and as able and willing to do the duty of good and godly
bishops [per se et non per aliuni] as ever were among the Papists, or in England,
since the first bishops were created in it ;" and with regard to the new ministry,
the same observer adds, that " he trusted likewise, that the clergy next under the
bishops should not be found one whit inferior in learning, nor honesty of life,
to theirs."
This, then, was really a great change, for the nation stood marvellously in
need, not only of a reformation in religion, commonly so called, but of manners,
zeal, and principles. Many of the new Bishops found their sees hi dreadful
disorder, and it required no ordinary judgment to discern the best mode of
* Histoire, p. 174.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 237
bringing them into order. In what manner these things were conducted
must be sought, by those who are interested in the regular and progressive
establishment of our Protestant Church, in the volumes of that eminent
ecclesiastical historian, Strype ; the following anecdote may perhaps deserve to
be noticed, as an early instance of the Secretary's concern for the clergy, and of
his ready attention to all reasonable complaints :
" In April, Richard Cheney, a learned man, made a complaint to Secretary
CECIL, concerning a wrong sustained by the late royal visitation. He was
incumbent of a parish, called Halford, in Warwickshire, of ten pounds per
annum [in the King's books as it seems] ; whereof he allowed his priest ten
pounds per annum, and he lived on the rest (as he wrote), that is, on the re-
mainder, which was little more. But being in that visitation absent from his
said living, charitably preaching about in the country, in the great want of
preachers at this time ; the harvest being, as he said, great, but the labourers
few, yea very few ; whether it were his absence or something else, which the
visitors took notice of, or offence at, but he was worse by forty pounds since
the Queen came in, than he was before. This man, being Archdeacon of
Hereford under King Edward, was one of the Convocation in the first year of
Queen Mary ; and, with five more,* did boldly dispute in that synod against
transubstantiation, with the learnedest men there that held that doctrine. In
his younger days he was often at Court, I suppose a preacher there ; but now
in his age chose a country retirement. ' I began first in my youth,' said he,
in a letter to the Secretary, ' at the Court, but I intend to make an end, in my
age, at the cart, at my circumcised benefice.' — He was a good Grecian, and
affected the true, though new way of pronouncing it, which Mr. Cheke, the
Greek Lecturer first set on foot in Cambridge ;f he had friends which offered to
procure him a bishoprick, or a prebend in Westminster ; but he declined both,
affecting rather a private life. He was lately called up to preach at Court,
where CECIL afterwards spying him, went, after his courteous way, towards
him, offering him his hand. This gave Mr. Cheney a fair encouragement to
write to him, and to let him know what damage he had lately sustained in his
poor preferment ; and so writ to him in April, after a facetious style, J which
was his way, hinting therein his wrong, and present poor estate, — but this
complaint of his made such an impression upon Cecil's tender heart, that he
* See vol. i. p. 577. t See vol. i. p. 55.
J In this letter is the story related referred to, vol. i. p. 55.
238 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
sent Cheney's letter to the Archbishop, and these kind words endorsed upon it,
' I beseech your Grace, consider of this poor man's merry, simple request,
indeed it is not his shame to lack : and, therefore, for God's sake, let him be
helped. I cannot with leisure do for him : but whatsoever your Grace will
devise for me to do, I will not forbear. Your Grace's at commandment,
'W.CECIL.'
" The same year, Eton College wanting a Provost, the Archbishop put the
Secretary in mind to recommend him to the Queen for that preferment, styling
him, ' a good, grave, priestly man,' but failing of that, he was preferred the
next year to the bishoprick of Gloucester."*
The author first cited gives the following account, under the year 1561, of
the progress of the Reformation to this time : —
" And now we may look back, and observe, what good progress was already
made in the reformation of religion. The dioceses were supplied with learned,
pious, Protestant Bishops ; images were removed out of the Churches ; the
Common Prayers celebrated in the English tongue ; the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper administered to the people in both kinds ; mass and transubstantiation
exploded ; the Pope's pretended jurisdiction in England rejected ; sound Articles
of Christian faith framed, and professed by the Clergy ; homilies, that is, plain,
practical sermons, set forth, to be read to the people, where preaching could not
be had. So that the Church of England was reduced to the same good state
wherein it was at the latter years of King Edward, as described by Bishop
Ridley, a little before his death. "f
It was in the summer of this year, that we first read of the Queen's visiting
the Secretary at his own house ; a compliment she always paid her subjects
with such form and ceremony, as was calculated indeed to confer no small
distinction, but often greatly to the trouble and expense of her hosts. We shall
have much more to say hereafter of the repeated honours of this kind conferred
upon Lord Burghley, all calculated to shew the high estimation in which he
was constantly held by a Sovereign of most singular discernment and penetration ;
and indeed, to mark this the more strongly, when not visited himself, he was
generally selected to accompany her upon other visits, as a counsellor, whose
* Strypes Annals, i. 373, 4. Cheney after all was a very singular and eccentric character,
though, in the main, amiable. — See more of him, Annals, i. ch. xxv.
t In the course of this year, the celebrated reformer, Peter Martyr, Divinity Professor at
Oxford in the reign of Edward, was invited to return to England, which he civilly declined.
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 239
presence, and consequently whose advice, was in all instances, and at all times,
necessary to her. On the 10th of July, her Majesty went in great state to the
Mint ; which, much to her credit, had been employed in preparing a coinage
of the true standard for general circulation ; a measure which the Secretary had
so much at heart, as apparently to have applied his mind anxiously to the
subject from the first moment of her accession, as we have shewn elsewhere.
After this, accompanied by trumpeters, heralds, gentlemen-pensioners, and a
large retinue of lords and ladies (Lord Hunsdon, her cousin, in due form
bearing the sword of state immediately before her), she repaired to the Lord
North's, at the Charter House, where, we are told, she tarried till " the 13th day,*
when she took her way from thence by Clerkenwell over the fields into the
Savoy, to Mr. Secretary CECIL'S, where she supped. Here her Council waited
on her, with many lords and knights and ladies ; and great cheer made till
midnight ; and then her Grace rode back to the Charter House, where she
slept that night."')" She proceeded after this upon a progress into Essex, and
the account given of her return to London marks, in no ordinary manner, the
difference of times, and travelling accommodations, even in the immediate
neighbourhood of the metropolis.
September 8. " The Queen, who had been in her progress, removed from
Hartford Castle to Enfield. And the 22d J she came from Enfield to St. James's
beyond Charing Cross. From Islington thither the hedges and ditches were
cut down to make the next way for her ; such was their gladness and affection
* 14th, Lord Burghley's notes.
i We might doubt whether this visit was quite agreeable to the Secretary: his own note of
it being as follows :
" July 14. The Queen supped at my house in the Strand, before it was fully finished ; and she
came by the fields from Christ Church."
J In the course of this month, it appears, from the Queen's letters to her Commissioners in the
North, the Duke of Norfolk, and Earls of Oxford and Rutland, and from other papers printed
in Haynes's Collection, that the King of Sweden was expected very soon to land somewhere on
the English shores, being then on the seas ; coming, " determined," as her Majesty was careful
to express, " of his own mind to this realm to visit us." Elizabeth, it seems, had been previously
rather offended with the officious and premature zeal of some of her subjects, who, in their anxiety
to see her married, had circulated papers with portraits of herself and the Royal Suitor, in one
print, as if already united. The Secretary was obliged to interpose, and to write to the Lord
Mayor to suppress all such papers, which seemed to touch her honour, as though she had
already consented to the union, "where indeed," the Secretary adds, as if from himself, " her
Majesty hitherto cannot be induced (whereof we have cause to sorrow) to allow of any marriage
240 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
to her. It was night ere she came over St. Giles's in the fields." From
Enfield to St. James's by Islington, could not have been more than 12 or 14
miles.
It was upon this excursion, which extended beyond Essex into Suffolk, that
Elizabeth took such offence, not only at the slovenly manner in which the
public services were performed, with little order or regularity, and often
without the prescribed habits, but at the married state of the clergy, to which
she was strangely disaffected. She caused an order to be made, dated from
Ipswich, August 9, strictly prohibiting all resort of women to the lodgings of
Cathedrals and Colleges ; and the Secretary was directed to forward it to the
Metropolitans of each province, and to the Universities. — Cecil was not well
pleased to have this to do ; and could not help telling Archbishop Parker, in
a letter, when the order was sent to him, how much he wished it otherwise ;
lamenting that the Queen should entertain such strong prejudices against the
marriage of priests, notwithstanding his utmost endeavours to remove them.
And that in truth the present order was but an expedient to moderate matters
as much as possible. But the whole letter should be transcribed, as tending to
shew, according to Strype, 112, the good and cordial temper and concern of
the Secretary both for the Church and University. It is dated, Smallbridge,
12 August, 1561.
"Your Grace shall understand that I have had hitherto a troublesome
progress, to stay the Queen's Majesty from daily offence conceived against the
clergy, by reason of the undiscreet behaviour of the Readers and Ministers, in
these countries of Suffolk and Essex. Surely here be many slender ministers,
and such nakedness of religion, as it overthroweth my credit. Her Majesty
continueth very ill affected to the state of matrimony in the clergy. And if I
were not therein very stiff, her Majesty would utterly and openly condemn and
forbid it ; in the end, for her satisfaction this injunction now sent to your Grace
is devised ; the good order thereof shall do no harm ; I have devised to send it
in this sort to your Grace, for your province ; and to the Archbishop of York
with any manner of person." This letter was written in July of this year, and may be seen in
Haynes, 368.
It is impossible, when treating of these offers of marriage, to omit to notice the celebrated
Discourse of Sir Thomas Smith, to be seen in the appendix to his Life by Strype ; wherein, in
the form of a dialogue, he most ingeniously discusses the three curious points, whether the Queen
should marry ? and if so, whether a foreigner? or an Englishman ?
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 241
for his, and to the Chancellors of the two Universities for their charge ;* so
as it shall not be promulged to be popular. The Bishop of Norwich is blamed
even of the best sort for his remissness in ordering his clergy ; he winketh at
Schismatics and Anabaptists, as I am informed ; surely I see great variety in
ministration ; a surplice may not be borne here ; and the ministers follow the
folly of the people, calling it charity to feed their fond humour. Oh! my
Lord, what shall become of this time." He next notices the commitment of
Lady Catharine Grey to the Tower, for having married the Earl of Hertford,
without the Queen's knowledge and consent; asks the Archbishop to recom-
mend to him for the mastership of St. John's College, Cambridge ; and
concludes, " Your Grace's at commandment, W.CECIL."
It must be observed, that the Injunction issued by the Queen is confined to
Colleges and Cathedrals, and proceeds upon the principle, that the Founders
had designed them to be places wholly devoted to study, and incompatible,
therefore, either with the cares of a family, or the residence of persons not
occupied in study, to the dislodgment or exclusion of such as were decidedly in
the view of the Founders. In regard to Colleges we may know at this time how
far the Queen was right ; but the case of Cathedrals was somewhat different
even then, as was observed by Bishop Cox, in a long letter to the Archbishop ;
the prebendaries' houses being large, separate, and distinct habitations ; which
would be inducements to residence, if they should be allowed to marry.
" There is," says his Lordship, " but one prebendary continually dwelling with
his family in Ely Church. Turn him out ; daws and owls may dwell there for
any continual house-keeping." The letter may be seen in Strype's Life, of
Parker, Anno 1561 ; where may also be seen, Appendix, No. xvii., the Arch-
bishop's own letter to the Secretary, greatly deploring the Queen's inexorable
and inveterate prejudice upon this point ; in an interview with whom, only the
day before, he had been so severely blamed, and so rudely treated, by her
Majesty, as to disturb him greatly, and which he attributed, as he tells Cecil,
to certain persons about her, that hated true religion, and did it to subvert the
gospel of Christ ; he was even apprehensive, from the Queen's manner, that she
* In Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, lib. vii. No. xii. maybe seen the Queen's letter to Sir William,
as Chancellor of Cambridge, with directions to have the Injunction communicated to every
College and Hall there; the letter is addressed to our " Trustye and right well-beloved Coun-
selor, Sir William Cecil, Knt. our principall Secretarie ; Master of our Court of Wards and
Lyveries, and Chancellor of our Universitye of Cambridge."
VOL. II. 2 I
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
TOaSi
" Whether the Secretary
yea, of he, ^ an a«empt »as
-r 5 rjr rr-r rrii:
of business or pleasure, and payment of money by -WT^^*^
common, that in the proclamation prohibiting such abuses m future, it wa
udg™ necessary to Jroduce a particular clause, to make it lawful for pers n
£££ bound" by any covenant or bond, to make tender -F^J^
Churches according to the obligation, unless, out of respect to the ^ amaUon
(as might be hoped and expected,) they should m the mean while other*
igret We may easily suppose, that in those comparatively rude times, such
a concourse of persons, gathered together for such different ends and purposes
must have been likely, besides the indecency of the custom in a general Po
of view, to lead to disputes, affronts, quarrels and contentions <*««£
to the great disturbance of the peace, or open breach of the laws.
mation therefore begins with the very natural complaint, that so much
« outrageous and unseemly behaviour" had disgraced these meetings
people, that it had become entirely necessary, speedily to reduce all nes,
to which such resort had been accustomed to be made, « to the godly v
which the same were builded."*
It may be remarked, that on the 4th of June preceding, the church o
Paul's had suffered great damage by fire; but whether by lightning, carelessness,
or the design of wicked persons, could not at the time be fully resolved
chiefly attributed to lightning, by which many other churches had
maged ; but Heylin informs us, that it was accounted for after, by 1
fession of a Plumber, on his death-bed, who owned that it proceeded
own carelessness, in leaving a pan of coals in the steeple, when he wei
dinner. It afforded ground, however, while judged to be done by lightning, to
the superstitious to indulge their fancies in regard to the object of such a v
tion of Providence. The Papists were prepared, as might be expected, t<
Strype's Life of Archbishop Grindal, 83, 84. &c.
1561-] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
- "•*- *
and profit, wherein he did as much, or more service to the
with
by his discharging this
U fl , •
•», ban credlt to h.mself, is not> that he did not deserve credit for the
mor; £ dutr' but *at his enemies « -^ - - ** s
i», because he was too busy, for their purposes, in
±r±±g his underfi"ss do *- d^ - ^ -
0^'tiftM \DTeS'iC' " PuHished hX Mr. Peck, in his D^erata
ma, two whole chapters are assigned to the subject before us, which besides
*mg too long, to be transcribed, ,nay be so easily consulted in «h work re e red
" CT " CeS!aIy t0 d° m°re 'lere tha" ** "» ^«-t of het
«
of he
very obvlous> tha,; jn bad hands_ .t MS a cQurt «
C°n"°"ed S°' "" ab°lished ^ St="»te '=•"»• f CharL II
'
w w-n ' =» •"»•
When Sir W.lham was first appointed, he found ifa revenues decayed,
advantages taken of the Crown, and con«emp, of the Court itself; h a
toadf immediately, therefore, to inquire into these abuses, and r medy them
by ra,s,»gthe customary fines, to the Queen's great advantage, ye, so moderately'
as not to oppress the subject; he was careful in placing his Wards, '• ever endca
vounng, says h,s Memorialist, "to corona, them to persons of s^und religion
' '
VIIL- M
; wherefore It was st,led the Court of Ward, and L,W™.
244 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1561.
preferring natural mothers, before all others, to the custody of their own
children, if they were not to be touched with any notable exception. He was
very particular in his orders or decrees, always giving his reasons for them, and
making them so short, plain, and full, that men of the meanest capacity might
understand and effect them. He would never suffer lawyers to wrangle, but
would ever hold them to the point."
" The reader may conceive," says one of his encomiasts, " what I say to be
so extraordinary, as to doubt whether my prejudice in his favour may not have
engaged me to state his abilities as a judge in language somewhat raised above
the truth ; but they must lose all prejudice when I affirm, that, for the sake of
brevity, I omit ten times the particulars which I might have recorded ; and that
we are assured, by credible authors, that whenever he sat in judgment, many
persons of great quality, and some of them none of his friends, would purposely
be present, that they might delight themselves with his nervous eloquence, and
admire that brief style, wherein he delivered many things clearly and distinctly,
yet in few words, unadorned with rhetorical figures, but so admirable from
their significant propriety, that however his abilities were, envied by many, they
were commended by all."
Camden says of him, that " he managed this place (as he did all his other)
very providently for the service of his Prince and the Wards, for his own
profit moderately, and for the benefit and advantage of his followers and
retainers beneficially ; yet, without offence, and with great commendations for
his integrity."
This post seems to have been so liable to abuse, that his enemies could not
but suppose, that, like his predecessors, he would let no private advantage or
emolument escape him; but his Domestic has shewn it to be quite otherwise ;
that his moderation was most exemplary, and all his profits made without any
touch or blemish to his honour and honesty ; as he instances indeed in several
particulars.
Before we conclude our account of this year, we ought not to omit to notice
the great diligence used, and chiefly under the direction of the Secretary, to
strengthen the kingdom, in every practicable manner, by provision of ships, and
warlike stores, augmenting the pay of the soldiers and sailors,* repairing and
* In consequence of this encouragement, Camden tells us, there were as many as 20,000
fighting men ready for the sea-service alone. Great attention was paid to the training of men to
1561.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BU11GHLEY. 245
enlarging the fortifications where needful, and very particularly in exploring,
and rendering available to public purposes, the natural riches of the country ;
thereby increasing her independence, in the most essential points, by giving her
a knowledge of, and greater confidence in, 'her own resources. A fortunate dis-
covery of the lapis calaminaris, in the course of this year, is particularly re-
corded, as of great importance in the preparation of brass, hitherto principally
confined to Germany,* whereby the ordnance was much and rapidly increased ;
many great guns, both in iron and brass, being castf without the aid of foreign
materials, or foreign labour. It was about this time that gunpowder first began
to be made in England. Great encouragement also was given to the agricul-
ture of the country, by allowing corn to be exported, which brought into tillage
a much larger proportion of the land than would otherwise have been cultivated,
to the augmentation of the supply of many of the first necessaries of life, and
the profitable employment of the poorer classes. To every thing of this nature
the attention of Lord Burghley seems to have been constantly directed ; there
was nothing of public, or even private utility, that does not appear, from memo-
randums in his own hand-writing still extant, to have occupied his thoughts,
while waiting only for suitable opportunities to carry the several improvements
which suggested themselves fully into execution.
arms ; the nobility and gentry being eager to do their utmost to strengthen the forces and military
prowess of the kingdom, by private armouries and mock skirmishes.
* The making of brass, by means of the lapis calaminaris, is said to have been kept a secret in
Germany for many ages.
t Though this attention was paid to the increase of the ordnance, archery was not neglected ;
we find it among the instructions given to the masters of endowed schools, that the boys, in their
vacant hours, should practise with their bows and arrows.
CHAP. IV.
1562.
The Fourth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, began November 17, 1561.
Correspondence between the two Queens on the Treaty of Edinburgh — Dangers from the
Guises — Knox and Conceus on the tyranny of the Guises — Necessity of examining into the
conduct of the Catholics — Projected interview of the two Queens — Elizabeth ill — Mary
of Scots anxious to have her title asserted — Cecil's letter to resign the Chancellor-
ship of Cambridge — Situation of France at the accession of Charles IX. — Massacre of
Vassi — Elizabeth assists the Hugonots — Confusion of parties — Throckmorton, Smith, Lei-
cester, fyc. — Shan O'Neale — Jewel's Apology — Death of Peter Martyr.
THE first entry under this 4th year of the Queen's reign in Lord Burghley's
notes, is to the following effect :
" Nov. 23. anno 4to Eliz. The Queen's Majesty wrote to the Queen of Scots,
that she cold not like of the Scotts Queens answer made to Sir Peter Mewtas,
who required to have the treaty confirmed, that was made at Edinburgh."
Mary's answer to this letter, about six weeks afterwards, is thus also noticed :
" Jan. 5. The Queen of Scotts wrote a letter, to answer the Queen Majesty's
letter, dated 23d Nov., sent before by Sir Peter Mewtas. — The Queen of Scotes
refuseth to confirm the Treaty of Edinburgh." Mary's letter may be seen in
Haynes, p. 376. addressed " To the richt excellent, richt heich and michty
princesse, our dearest sister and cousine, the Quene of Ingland." It contains
many handsome compliments to the judgment of Elizabeth, and very frankly
states the ground of her objections to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, to be an
apprehension that it might affect her reversionary title to the English crown ;
that is, as Mary herself expresses it, " failzeing of Elizabeth, and the lawchfull
ishe of her body." Had Mary at this time been free from all her foreign con-
nexions, it would be impossible to object to the tenor of this letter. She had by
descent as great a right as any to come next to Elizabeth, and the lawful issue of
her body ; and ultimately, as we know, the crown descended in this right line.
But though this were ever so true, yet Elizabeth's reasons for not declaring Mary
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 247
to be her next heir are certainly very plausible ; after assuring her that " she
would do nothing of herself to the prejudice of Mary's right to the crown of
England, she observed, that the declaring her- successor while she had youth
and hopes of issue, might be the only means to breed discord between them ; it
being common to the apparent heirs to wish for the death of such as detain
them from the possessions ; besides such declaration might remove the good
will and affections of her people from her to her successor ; according to an
old proverb, that many observed the rising, but few the setting sun ; adding
many examples of the mutability of subjects' behaviour towards their Sovereigns,
according to their different circumstances of life ; that as in all courts there Were
some persons whose loyalty and fidelity depended upon the opportunities they
had to gratify their own covetous humour, so when their hopes were frustrated
by the immediate Sovereign, they were apt to direct all their thoughts, wishes,
and good offices, to advance the interest of the next successor, or any having
pretension, whom they should esteem most answerable to their ends ; and there-
fore she freely said, that she could never think her own life and condition safe,
after she had declared her successor."
As long as Mary appeared to be a willing instrument in the hands of her fo-
reign relatives, it was impossible with any safety to treat with her individually.
The refusal on Elizabeth's part to declare the heir to her crown has subjected
her to the imputation of being quite regardless of posterity, and of the dangers
that might arise after her death, from a disputed succession ; but Elizabeth was
not to be expected to endanger herself to save posterity, and in truth there was
much more at stake than any mere disputes about the descent of the crown.
Mary was already a sufficient rallying point to the disappointed Catholics of
England, as she well knew, and had not forborne to intimate to Throckmorton
himself, and though it was not till long after this that the latter became dange-
rous to Elizabeth, and then only in consequence of the Popes interference,* yet
there is no saying what might have been the issue of Elizabeth's public ac-
knowledgment of Mary's claims to a throne, from which her father had appeared,
for some reason or other, so carefully, though unjustly perhaps, to have excluded
her ; it was a delicate point to ask Elizabeth to proclaim the injustice of her
father, at the desire of a family who would have set aside all her own claims,
* It seems to be generally acknowledged that, for the first ten years of the Queen's reign, a
great abundance of Roman Catholics frequented the churches, " without shew of misliking."
— See Collier, ii. 436. and the Queen's instructions to Walsingham, Aug. 11. 1570.
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
«bceof her periUs if the G^ prosper." Was
in this ' certainly great harm, if it proceeded from mere ma-
£** s suspicLs of a family, on many accounts of high
of Europe ; but his views were altogether
a»y ,,4 ^ ^^, * ^ «-
, and v Reformation. This may be learned
; ^; ::Pe -t : ^ be seen in ^s ^^ to be . a Tr
bv s °n the p^is gr°wing up°n the °verthrow pr^ce
' - That is in the contest he had with the Guises; who were con-
dees cause s, " h Qwn haftds> and extir.
lg ett±:^-c,ions toThrockmorton, May H, ,«.,
the possibility of Henry having omitted the Scotch
,«.th. .offered ,o» a.ess n in wi rases, lherefore,
urcs Cod, to con,c,.,, , -«- *' , I,' t s U.C Jseouish Wancb, „, »hieh
i^: T,,; ^*- ««. «. «,„,
, not on,, ,.», UU-ingU,. ... s-erel, ,„ e,e.ud
U aL. Id • ',,, e -nLnc/an., ins, of .he So.d in,elligenoe off ,,,e begone be-
Ih m knolg also ,h« 5». and 7 be Wfc .f ««« »»* .« direct all ou, acuons »d cred.t,
ix them , knowing iisu y Anfi V> neaks of having amply discussed
d -\" leth f he Xbundancelf luif Nature had wrocht in her heart towards her," we can-
aH upon the truth or sincerity of such expressions, on e.ther s.de ; the m,-
n°ri^t* ^ ™ ^bing - Folte an" amity between them, but the high-flown terms
msters m.ght be s
Lnly tty -regn;t formally proscribed by her relatives in France, in resentment of the,
siding with the Protestants ?-See Camden, 40, 41.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 24g
he writes, « as for your doings with the family of Guise, it shall be meet to shew
good countenance towards them, and if ye shall find any friendship
entertain it with as good; if otherwise, ye may dissemble AP
meeteth; for it is best to know them without knltdT fa T' ? ** "*
it i. to be learned ^ and therein may ye have £ J^Sc™ * bTtt
come to the memorial.
"The whole regyment of the crown of Fraunce shall be in the hands of the
0«*»; and to maynteane their faction, they wi!l pleasure the Kyi of
^r^r^oz: p,Tr r±r £:: TT b™-
tcr:r^^
^^
realme of Ir and to be gy ven in a praye to the Kyng of Spayne. ?
m a« when some forreyn force sllall be reddy ,„ ' / °J
When the raa,.er „ brought to these teames, tha, ,I,e Papists shall have he
upper hand then w.ll it be ,00 late to sete to withstand i, : I tll!m „,„
be lyke a great rock of stone, that is falling downe from the top of a
mountaj „, which, when ,t is coming, no force can stey
"Whosoever thynketh that relentyng in relligion will asuage the Gui,ims
HT7 H ar far; deceyved :* for tw° appetiics wm — * -*
w,tl the Hyng dcsyred. The desyre to have such a Jcyngdom as England and
Scotland may make, uny,ed; and the cruell appetite of a Pope, and his adle
VOL. n. 2 K
250 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
rents, to have his authorite re-established fully, withowte any new daunger of
attempt."
We are not so scantily supplied with the history of Europe, as to be unable to
appreciate properly this specimen of Cecil's foresight, notwithstanding all the
outcry that has been made against him and his extraordinary Sovereign, for
indulging visionary fears, and groundless apprehensions. We are utterly asto-
nished at the ignorance, or rather malice, that has been displayed by some much
admired writers, in representing Elizabeth's life to have been altogether a life of
unprovoked mischief and self-sought misery;* of mischief to others, in the
plots which she is alleged, by such writers, to have been always forming against
them ; and of misery to herself, through her groundless suspicions of unintended
designs against her Crown and Government. If Cecil's distrust of the Guises
were vain and groundless, what are we to think of the precautions of Francis I.
reported by very grave historians, as Bayle has shewn ?f If the ambition of this
illustrious family (for illustrious it certainly was) could be formidable to the
Kings of France, what had not Elizabeth to apprehend, as the usurper of a
crown, supposed to belong to one of their own race?J We shall venture to
* " Elizabeth's life was a life of mischief and misery ; of mischief to others, in the plots which
she was always forming against them ; and of misery to herself, in the fears and apprehensions
which she was always entertaining of them. She was continually forging schemes of malignity
against them, from some visionary fears of her own concerning them." — Whitaker'-s Vindication of
Mary Queenof Scots, vol. i. 39, 40. We copy this as, in our own estimation, one of the greatest
perversions of history we ever met with. Camden knew better, when at the very outset of his
history of her reign, contemplating the perilous course she had to run, and the way she took, " to
purchase herself love amongst her subjects, amongst her enemies fear, and glory amongst all men,"
he observes, " How by these manly cares and counsels she surpassed her sex, and what she
effected by most wisely perverting, diverting, and most stoutly resisting, let present and future ages
judge, by those things which, with uncorrupt faithfulness, shall be delivered out of the very com-
mentaries of the kingdom, as I may so term them." p. 32. Mr. Turner, a living historian, does
not hesitate to say of Elizabeth's reign, " The tyrannical plans of others made her life a continued
war, for the last thirty-five years, with the Popedom, Papal Hierarchy, and its Popish tenets,
schools, and practices ; and the history of her reign is the history of their ever-reviving attacks."
—Modern History of England, Reign of Elizabeth, b. ii. ch. 18. We cannot help adding the
following short passage from M. Ferrand's Esprit de L'Histoire Paris, 1809 : " Elizabeth occupa
le trfine d'Angleterre dans les circonstances les plus difficiles ou 1' Europe se fut trouvee, et sa
conduite fut perpetuellement un modele de politique."
t See preceding note.
t Goodali finds fault with Melvil for " injuriously charging the Guises with being the chief
instruments of all the troubles in Scotland." — Preface, p. xxi. We have no hesitation in saying
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 251
say, that in the then state of Europe, Cecil's memorial was any thing but
visionary and futile. What he foresaw did not indeed happen, but only perhaps
because he foresaw it in time to prevent it. This was his policy ; a policy,
perhaps, the least scrutinized, and the most unrequited, by a thoughtless poste-
rity, of any that can be pursued or adopted.
It is to us, we must confess, very surprising, that those who have with an
unbounded enthusiasm defended the cause of the injured Mary (for injured
she was, past all denial) should not have seen that, in their violent abuse of
Elizabeth as an usurper, a bastard — not to mention a hundred other foul names—
they betray a temper which, if the same were displayed against her while she
was alive by her enemies or rivals, was enough to account for all the ill-will she
manifested towards them in return ; and we have scarcely any doubt, notwith-
standing all the courtly and high-flown addresses she received from other poten-
tates, that beneath their fine words exactly such a temper was continually
lurking. Henry II. of France was as profuse as any in his adulatory compli-
ments and professions of friendship to the daughter of Queen Anne Boleyn, at
the very time that he was urging the Pope to bastardize her, hurl her from her
throne, and proclaim his daughter-in-law, Mary of Scots, to be the true Sovereign
of England ! but when, by the death of Henry, the Guises came into power, and
their niece became Queen of France, as well as Scotland, the temptation to
dethrone Elizabeth was naturally greatlv increased, with regard to her French
neighbour; and not to have mistrusted, in that perfidious age, any apparently
friendly or conciliatory advances, would have amounted to a great want of
vigilance and attention, on the part of any of Elizabeth's Ministers, Agents, or
Diplomatists. The vigilance and attention with which Elizabeth was served by
some of her Ministers, Agents, and Diplomatists, exceeds perhaps all that is to be
that we think Melvil was right. Goodall vulgarly adds, " How great pity was it that these Guises
did not reward the Gentleman according to his demerits ;" and he afterwards lays it down as a
maxim, that " wherever a Scottish man is found getting a pension from the English Court, he may
be pronounced to be a Traitor to his native country, without danger of mistake." In our first
volume, we have shewn that pensions from the French Court bore no such ill name in the time of
Henry VIII. or Edward VI., though it seems almost needless to repeat, what we have there shewn,
that the French influence was far more detrimental to the true interests, peace, and tranquillity of
Scotland than that of England. Goodall must be excused for his Scotch prejudices, even in the
eighteenth century; but we shall nevertheless, as freely as ever, avow it to be our opinion that, in
the sixteenth century, Scotland had worse enemies in France than in England, if we look to the
objects in dispute.
252 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
found in the histories of other nations ; but because that vigilance and attention
were successful in keeping her on her throne, and preserving England and
Scotland from the grasp of foreigners, and Protestantism from the ruin and
overthrow which were contemplated by the irritated Romanists of all countries,
the means adopted are traduced as uncalled for, unjust, insidious, and fraudu-
lent, the whole is judged to be plot, conspiracy, and stratagem, on the part of
England, when it was almost invariably counterplot.* The latter is known from
its effects, while the adverse plots have, in a great variety of instances, fallen
into oblivion, or, in truth, never been revealed. The coarsest thing perhaps ever
uttered against the unfortunate Queen of Scots, by John Knox, was as follows :
" Of the tyranny of the Guisian blood, in HER, that for our unthankfulness now
reigneth over us, we have had sufficient experience ; but of any virtue that ever
was espied in King James V., whose daughter she is called, to this hour we have
never seen any sparkle." James V., as we have shewn in our former Volume,
had virtues which, whether Mary inherited or not, we have no occasion to discuss
here. The Guisian family, with all its bigotry and ambition, was renowned for
bravery and courage, and therefore not to be contemned ; but to mark the temper
* We have a curious proof of this in a letter from the Secretary to Sir Ralph Sadler and
Sir James Croft, December 12, 1559. Cecil had been watching the motions of the French, under
a persuasion, which we think is supported by the most clear testimony of history, that in rein-
forcing their troops in Scotland, they had designs upon England ; but he wished the breach of
treaty to be thrown upon them, if possible, because he could not proceed against them openly,
while his colleagues in the Council differed from him as to the French preparations, and because
the kingdom was not in a state to provoke any avoidable war. Hearing, however, at last that they
had, contrary to treaty, begun to fortify Aymouth, he writes thus to the two Commissioners : —
" The tyme tarrieth not as ye see. This day the matter of Aymouth maketh us styrr ; our shippes,
being xii men of warr, well appoynted, with viii or x Victellers, with viii others, with munition
armurc, powder, were appoynted to depart by the 20th hereof. And now, this daye also, we
understand, that 40 Sayles be past /row France, with men and vittell ; so as ours be lyke to come
too late. The matter is too weighty to be triffled; and so we all note, at the last, doo judge :
wherein I wold to God some had been of more spedy foresight. You shall perceive, by the Queaes
Majesties lettre, that because it is a violation of the treatyto fortefy at Aymouth, ye may be the
bolder to be doing with the French : if ye see that they do not fortefy, then are they to be forborne
untill the matter may be more earnestly followed ; for els it were daungeroose to begyn the matter,
and not to follow it with effect; and, on the other syde, if their fortifying shall seme a matter of
difficuhe for us hereafter to expell them, it wer better to begin in tyme with them."— Sadler's
Papers, ii. 635. Camden tells (what some have thought an improbable story) that D'Oysel, the
French commander, assembled the Scotch Nobles at Aymouth, and proposed to them the imme-
diate invasion and conquest of England.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 253
of the Romanists, if it had been allowed to spend its force in France, Scotland,
and England, we may form some judgment, from the account given of
James the Vth's virtues, by a countryman and contemporary of Knox, already
often cited — we mean Census ; not hesitating to refer this good King's untimely
death to the secret agency of some English or Scotch heretic, in the army at
Solway Moss,* he regrets his loss, because as he had caused many heretics
(Protestants) to suffer a just punishment by the fire, the sword, or the halter, it
might be concluded, that had he been permitted to live longer, not a single
Protestant would have been left to pollute Ms native land! The whole story may
now be told, though much of it relates to what passed between Henry VIII. and
James, as recorded in our first volume.
" MAIIIA septem tantum dies nata Patrem amisit, ad cujus interitum merito
BRITANNIA ingemuisse dicitur: eo siquidem regnante in procerum quorun-
dam mentibus pullulare cepit, quse dudum Germaniam concusserat, LUTHERI
H^ERESIS, defecitque a majorum erga ROMANUM SEDEM OBEDIENTIA, im-
pura captus libidine, HENKICUS VIII. Anglise Rex : qui omnem movit lapidem,
ut JACOBUM Regem sororis suse filium ab avita erga CHRISTI VICARIUM fide
avocaret (in qua Octoginta tres Scotiae Reges, a prima sub victore 1. An. Dora,
cciii. suscepta veritate, constantes permanserunt) quare Eboracum invitavit, et
quia abnuerat (indignum quippe rebatur princeps CATHOLIC us ad colloquium
cum APOSTATA descendere) crudeli bello petitus est ; nee tamen anglorum arma
tantum reformidabat, quantum ne in vasto burcaliuiii regiunuin incendio detri-
ment! aliquid apud suos religio caperet ; quamobrem INQUISITORES adhibuit
publicos, qui in cunctorum mores animadverterant, quamque doctrinam profite-
rantur investigarent. Nonnulli, quos lethalis infecerat pastis, IGNE CREJIATJ
scelerum suorum poenas dedere, aliqui ENSE,^ alii LAQUEO periere ; nullus vivo
JACOBO impune tulit impietatem, mansuraque in fide SCOTIA credebatur, si
Jacobus in vivis mansisset ;J cujus mortem profligatus prope angliam hsereti-
corum, qui in castris latebant, perfidia exercitus accelerasse fertur." — pp. 5, 6.
And as if this Catholic writer were bent upon going further than Knox, in
assigning to Mary a double inheritance of persecuting principles, he is careful
• Vol. i.
t Compare Bishop Leslie's praise of the Reformers for their forbearance, as already noticed,
page 86.
t " The premature death of James V. of Scotland," says McCrie, " saved the Reformers from
destruction."— i. 334.
254 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
to add, that Mary of Guise, the Queen of James V., was not in any degree
behind him in the hatred she bore to the Reformists*
"Nee minus erat Marise GUISIJE pise admodum et religiosse principis in
CATHOLICS veritatis HOSTES, quam Jacobi mariti ODIUM. "f — Illo Patre, hac
Matre genita MARIA STUARTA.
This is sufficient to mark the temper with which the commencement and
progress of the Reformation in Scotland were contemplated by the Catholics,
and the expectations they had formed of Mary's co-operation in the great work
of rooting out all heretics, if she had been suffered to attain to any exercise of
arbitrary power.']] And that this was her design, however she might be induced
* See McCrie's note on Mary of Guise's hatred of Heretics. — Life of Knot, vol. i. 431,
note FF.
f Of the Queen Regent's odium of Heretics, there is a remarkable story extant, which seems too
well authenticated to be at all questioned; and it may reasonably be mentioned as affording a clue
to the extraordinary excitement of the human mind, upon religious- subjects, during the struggles
of the sixteenth century. Entering Perth, in violation of an agreement just concluded with the
Lords of the Congregation, the Frenchmen who accompanied her, in discharging their pieces,
directed them against the house of Patrick Murray, an active Reformer, and killed his only son.
The dead body was displayed before the Queen's eyes, who, under the infatuation of a feeling of
unappeasable intolerance, declared that the accident-was only to be lamented because it had
happened to the son instead of the father. As we are writing of an age in which it often seems,
to this day, almost impossible to account for an extraordinary want of feeling in persons of the
greatest historical celebrity, on various occasions, we refer to this story as related of a Queen of
those days, who, independent of such excitements, is allowed to have been a woman of many virtues,
and truly amiable qualities. — See Cook on the Reformation in Scotland, ch. x.
J " Nursed from her infancy in a blind attachment to the Roman Catholic religion, every means
was employed before she left France to strengthen this prejudice, and to inspire her with aversion
to the religion which had been embraced by her people. She was taught that it would be the
great glory of her reign to reduce her kingdom to the obedience of the Romish See, and to co-
operate with the Popish Princes on the Continent in extirpating heresy. If she forsook the religion
in which she had been educated, she would forfeit their powerful friendship ; if she persevered in
it, she might depend upon their assistance to enable her to chastise her rebellious subjects, and
prosecute her claims to the English crown against an heretical usurper." — McCrie's Knox, ii.22, 23.
See further as to her private determination to restore Popery, though obliged for a time to tem-
porize,—ib. 23. And, p. 24, her solemn mass on the first Sunday after her arrival, though it had
been prohibited by an Act of the late Parliament ; and, according to Knox, made a condition of
her return on the invitation of the Protestants, that she should abstain from the celebration of the
mass, (a hard, rude, and unwarrantable condition, if ever proposed, but soon relinquished, to their
credit, by Murray and her Council, as far as regarded her own chapel.— ib. 31.) Of her fixed design,
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 255
to temporize at first, seems clearly proved by the evidence of many circumstances,
adduced by the learned author of the Life of Knox. See particularly vol. ii.
p. 23, and note H. p. 303. And, to refer again to the same author, Conceus,
who, it may be asked, was the person that prevented her taking that course,
which, according to her family connexions, appeared to be most natural to
her? NOTHUS (as he is called), the Bastard; even Lord James Stuart, her
natural brother ; the very person who, when he had passed the seas to confer
with his sister on the state of things in Scotland, and invite her to return to
her native country, narrowly escaped being kidnapped, through the advice of
Leslie, afterwards Bishop of Ross, Mary's chief counsellor of her own church.
In fact, according to Conseus, Mary's Catholicism was to be measured by
her inveteracy against Heretics, whatever might be her natural temper and
disposition.
For what purpose, it may, and probably will be asked, are these things
brought forward ? merely to blacken the character of the Romanists, and shew
that Mary deserved all that befell her ? Far from it ; we heartily wish she had
escaped all the sufferings she underwent ; and very assuredly we never wish to
say more of the Catholics than truth requires. But truth does require, that
their sentiments, during the times of which we are writing, should be weighed
and considered in a work like the present, where we have to encounter, at
every step, the foulest imputations against those who took the line in politics
and religion which Lord Burghley himself principally pursued.* Let Murray
however, to restore the Roman Catholic religion in Scotland, and of her determined resolution to
resent all opposition that might be made to it, we have some curious testimonies adduced by
McCrie, vol. ii. note H.
* It is not only requisite, for the clearing of the characters of persons and actions during this
century, and while the great revolution in the Church was going forward, to read the account of
facts as given by both parties ; but it is absolutely necessary, to the historian or biographer himself;
to bring forward such passages as the above, that the temper of the times may be thoroughly
understood. Hume is amused with the gaiety and alacrity with which the Reformer Knox speaks
in his history of the assassination of Cardinal Beaton, noticed in our first volume. McCrie, in
his Life of the Reformer, has an admirable note upon this (vol.i. note M, p. 40.), in which he
shews, that if Protestants rejoiced on the death of persecutors, the Catholics fully as much lamented
the escape of the persecuted. As Conceus, in the passage above, fairly condoles with Pope Urban,
to whom his book is dedicated, on the premature death of James V., as an interruption to the
efforts of the royal Inquisitors, bent upon rooting out the Scotch heretics ; in like manner, even
the temperate and honest Keith, as he is called, contemplates the death of Beaton as a hindrance
256 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
have been the bad man some would have him .to have been though others an.
as warm in his praise, yet his politics with regard to Scotland were Anti.
Galilean and Anti- Guisian ; and his religion, as far as regarded his profess,
and associations, Protestant. These are the great objects to be kept in view,
when we would review the history of those sad times ; not in regard to Murray
only but to Elizabeth and her most able Ministers. And therefore we began our
history with the very first struggles of Protestantism in Scotland as well
England, through a natural feeling of respect and concern for the best interests
of both countries, as constituting at present one great nation, entirely British in
all its parts. And though the melancholy fate of Mary Stuart seems to have
excited'n Scottish writers a bitter enmity towards England for its mterference
at this period, yet, as far as regarded the true interests of Scotland the Scots
appear to have been as much beholden to Elizabeth, and to her Ministers, as
England. At the very period of which we are writing, Cecil probably entirely
saved Scotland from French domination, though often thwarted by the Phihp-
pians at the English Court, who, in conjunction with French Envoys were
acquirino- a contrary influence with Elizabeth ; while Knox, in his rough way,
but with a very zealous sincerity, upheld the cause of the Scottish Reformation
not merely against Mary and the Papists, but against Murray, Lethmgton, a
other leaders of the Reformed party, who were in danger, as he judged, of being
faulted or lulled into a dangerous security, by Mary's blandishments and
insinuating behaviour. The author of the Life of Knox is by no means backward
to acknowledge, that the Scottish Protestants were much indebted to Ceo
Throckmorton for the assistance they received from England; (vol. i. p. 4
We have a remarkable testimony to adduce in proof of Mary's management at
this time The Cardinal de St. Croix, the Pope's Ambassador to the Court
France writes to Cardinal Borromeo at Rome, in November 1561, only three
months after her arrival in Scotland, under various great disadvantages, that
the Grand Prior of France, one of Mary's uncles, and Mons. Danville had jus
to the same measures, in the following passage : « What might have proved to be the issue of
such procedure [Beaton's severe measures against the Reformers] had he enjoyed hi. 1.
considerable time, I shall not pretend to judge : only this seems to be certain, that by hu death
the reins of the government were much loosened ; and sonic persons came to be considerabl,
after who probably, if he had lived, had never got the opportunity to perpetrate such v.llan,
under the cloak of religion, as 'tis certain they did ; he being at least no less a statesman than
a clergyman:' This language, as McCrie rightly observes, needs no commentary.
I562-l MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. £57
arrived from Scotland, and brought information that the Queen was going
on successfully in surmounting all opposition to her in that kingdom.* This
being true, she might well resent Elizabeth's imputations upon her youth and
want of experience; to all appearance, nobody could know better what she was
about, or proceed more regularly to the accomplishment of her designs. Though
surrounded by Protestants, and her Ministry composed of them, in the autumn
of 1562 the Scotch Catholics appear to have, entertained great hopes of a
change. We shall not attempt to unravel the mysteries of the conflict between
Murray and the Gordons, on the Queen's memorable excursion to the North,
during which the Lord James was made Earl of Murray, and his uncle Earl of
Mar, to the great mortification of the Earl of Huntley, who, by taking arms to
avenge the affront, lost his life in the cause; we can only refer to the best
known histories of these transactions, leaving it to the reader to decide, whether
* McCrie, ii. 304. The eminent persons to whom the Cardinal de St. Croix alludes, had not
only been allowed to pass through England on their return to France, but been magnificently
entertained by Elizabeth. They arrived in France on the 17th Nov. 1561 .three months only after
Mary's arrival in Scotland. If then St. Croix, the Pope's Ambassador, made the communication
spoken of, there can be no doubt that Mary's successful proceedings bespoke great danger to the
cause of the Reformation, and consequently to England and England's friends. We grant that she
had a right to use all possible blandishments to turn the hearts of those who had acted contrary
to her own principles, and so far in opposition to her ; but if she prevailed, it was impossible to
overlook the sacrifices to which both countries would be exposed. The English Government and
the zealous Protestants of Scotland, had nothing to look to but the defeat of all their previous
efforts to emancipate England and Scotland from the tyranny of Rome and the ambition of the
Gmses. Elizabeth is sure to be blamed for interfering with Mary's views, even by authors who
admit the enmity of Mary's foreign relatives. Dr. Cook, for instance, who never spares the
English Queen, speaking of Mary's refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, says she was
confirmed in her refusal " by the advice of her uncles, who, detesting Elizabeth, used every method
to disturb the tranquillity of her reign." Is not this some excuse for Elizabeth's angry feelings and
jealous.es ; considering that the enmity of the Guises became manifest at the moment of her
accession. Knox's rude speeches of his native Sovereign cannot in these days be excused • but
r he had imbibed an opinion that subjects might resist the royal authority, in its endeavours to
restore an idolatrous worship, his fault it would seem lay in fancying that Princes could be resisted
or deposed by any other than the Roman Pontiff, according to the following maxim of the Church
of Rome : " Christians cannot be suffered to tolerate any Infidel or Heretic King ; if that King
attempt to draw his subjects into heresy or infidelity. Yet it belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff, who
is charged with the care of religion, to judge whether the King does or does not draw his
subjects into the heresy. It thus rests with the Sovereign Pontiff to decide on the deposition of
the King."— Bellarmin Contravenes du Pontife Romain, lib. v. c. 6, 1596.
VOL. II. 2 L
258 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
it were a mere private feud, or an attempt to rescue Mary from the hands of
Murray with her own connivance, as is by some strongly alleged ; but if this
were not exactly so, there were movements in other parts, and such a confidence
manifested by the Popish Clergy, according to Spottiswood,as to have drawn from
Mary the remark, that, " She hoped, before a year was expired, to have the Mass
and Catholic profession restored through the whole kingdom."* Notwithstanding
all the roughness of Calvinism, as displayed in the behaviour of Knox, Mary
was undoubtedly making her way in a most extraordinary manner, and contrary
to all that might have been expected had the tables been reversed. In the work
entitled, " Histoire du Calvinisme et celle du Papisms mises en parallele, ou
apologie pour les Reformateurs, pour la Reformation, et pour les JReformts,
Rotterdam 1683," the following passage occurs, which I cite from Dr. McCrie's
translation : " Mary," says the author, " was brought up in France, accustomed
to see Protestants burned to death, and instructed in the maxims of her uncles,
the Guises, who maintained that it was necessary to exterminate without mercy
the pretended reformed. With these dispositions she arrived in Scotland,
which was wholly reformed, with the exception of a few Lords. The kingdom
receive her, acknowledge her as their Queen, and obey her in all things
according to the laws of the country. I maintain, that, in the state of men's
spirits at that time, if a Hugonot Queen (Elizabeth, par exemple,} had come to
take possession of a Roman Catholic kingdom, with the retinue with which
Mary came to Scotland, the first thing they would have done would have been
to arrest her; and if she had persevered in her religion, they would have
procured her degradation by the Pope, thrown her into the inquisition, and
burned her as a heretic. There is not an honest man who dare deny this."f
* See Robertson, and McCrie, particularly his note, vol. i. 59, from Sir Robert Gordon's
Genealogical History of the earldom of Sutherland.
t It is curious to contrast this passage with the following one from Chalmers : " Had Mary
returned to Scotland at the end of thirteen years, as complete a Hugonot as Arran, and as
determined a Calvinist as Knox, the same misfortunes had befallen her, while Elizabeth's dissimu-
lation governed England ; while Murray's ambition influenced Scotland." It is not our business
to deny either the dissimulation of the one, or the ambition of the other, generally. The principal
point to be ascertained is, what were the objects of their dissimulation and ambition, if those
were their ruling principles ; and we must confess, we cannot help thinking they were to protect
themselves, and their respective countries, from the ruinous effects of the dissimulation and
ambition of others.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 259
Among other things contemplated in the course of this year, was an inter-
view between the two Queens, to take place at York, [or Nottingham Castle,
according to a note of Lord Burghley's.] It is almost impossible to conjecture
what the object of this could be : it is capable of proof to this day, that
whatever professions of friendship might have been exchanged between the
two sovereigns, or however important a perfect amity between the two
kingdoms might appear, there was one point of difference that could not be
got over. — Mary would not ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh without certain
modifications, and Elizabeth would not admit of any modifications that should
place Mary in the light of a claimant of the Crown of England, even next in
succession to herself;* on both sides, to apply an expression of Lethington's,
there was such " courage and stomach," that it would seem to have been
vain to expect that any concession would take place. Randolph, indeed, as
well as Lethington, appears to have formed hopes and expectations, that if the
two Queens could but meet, Mary might be taught to see better her own true
interests, as well as those of her country. (See Miss Benger's Life of Mary,
vol. ii. 165. and Randolph's Letter there cited.) Some hopes even were enter-
tained that Mary, having a high idea of Elizabeth's sense and judgment, might
have been prevailed on to abandon her religion and accede to the opinions of
the Reformers, then regarded as forming a majority of her subjects. [Cook, iii.
118, 119.] But in all probability this would not have happened; Mary has
been suspected of proposing it as an opportunity of shewing herself to the
English, in hopes of attaching them to her interests as a claimant to the
* Mary's claim to be declared next heir was plainly in derogation of Henry's will, on which
Elizabeth's own title so much depended. Many writers, and Dr. Robertson among the number,
have thought, that in ratifying the Treaty of Edinburgh, Mary would have relinquished her
right for ever; but as she, about this very time, wished Lethington to be allowed to plead her
right before the Parliament, she must have supposed that the Parliament, under all circum-
stances, might be called upon to decide upon disputed titles ; and Elizabeth was quite willing to
declare she would do nothing of herself to the prejudice of Mary's claims ; adding, however,
that if another had a better title (which, according to the will of Henry, was the case with the
Suffolk line), it were unjust to require of her to make a public edict to such a person's prejudice.
Had the arms and titles of England never been assumed by Mary and her husband, on the
suggestion of the Guises and the French Court, the case might have been different, but as long
as the Treaty of Edinburgh remained unratified by Mary, she might certainly be understood to
imply, that the Arms and Title ought not to be relinquished upon demand, and, in fact, that
they had not been wrongfully assumed. — See Rapin, upon the conduct of the two Queens on
this point, and the term, " for the future."
260 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
English Crown ; if so, it is nonsense to fancy that Elizabeth was to blame for
deferring the meeting, or that she was merely swayed by a foolish appre-
hension that she should be outshone in personal beauty and accomplishments. That
beauty and those accomplishments might have done more than merely mortify
her vanity ; they might have endangered her crown, if what has been imputed
to Mary by some of her own admirers be correct. [Cook, iii. 121.] The two
Secretaries, however, had much correspondence and communication upon the
subject, and many formalities were gone through as though the parties were in
earnest ; the meeting was proposed to take place some time between the 20th
of August and 20th of September, either at York, or " some convenient place
betwixt the said City and the River of Trente." The Queen of England was to
be left at liberty to require the ratification of the Treaty made at Edinburgh,
July 3, 1560. The Queen of Scots might enter the kingdom of England with
a retinue of 1000 persons (French and Scots) and no more, and might use the
rites and ceremonies of her religion, during her stay, without lett or impedi-
ment, and a regular passport or safe conduct (to be seen in Haynes} was duly
prepared for her passage into England. But the troubles in France, in which the
Princes of Lorrain bore a conspicuous part, apparently adverse to the interests
of Elizabeth and the Reformed religion, put an end to the interview, or at least
occasioned its postponement for the present, and at no time afterwards, though
often talked of, and referred to the English Council, was it found expedient to
renew the engagement. It may not, perhaps, after all, be judged unreasonable
to refer to this intended interview, as some explanation of the alleged design
to interrupt Mary on her way to Scotland. We have stated our reasons for
supposing it might be for the end of informing the young Queen of the actual
and real state of the affairs of both kingdoms, under the revolution going
forward, and which in Scotland, by the Treaty of Edinburgh, had been as nearly
as possible brought to a conclusion in favour of Protestantism, to the benefit of
both countries ; at all events, an interview seems to have been contemplated at
this time for such purposes, and upon a footing of friendship ; Lethington,
Randolph, and Cecil* himself, appearing to agree in the wish to bring it
about. Reasons, however, have been given for Mary's ultimately wishing to
decline it, as well as Elizabeth. f
' Throckmorton also seems to have thought it desirable, but likely to be prevented by the
garboils in France.— See his Letter to Chaloner from Paris.— Haynes, 386.
t Cook's Reformation, iii. 121, 122. and see Camden on the interview under the year 1562.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 261
Towards the conclusion of this year, upon an illness that befel Elizabeth, Mary
appears, through her Secretary Lethington, to have been very anxious to establish
her claim to the English throne, and to wish to have it submitted to Parliament
by Maitland himself, or rather asserted before the Parliament, as a claim she was
prepared to support in case any thing fatal should occur. This eagerness, as
Dr. Cook observes, could only tend, upon Elizabeth's recovery, to augment
" the fear, antipathy, and jealousy, with which, notwithstanding her deceitful
expressions of tender affection, she had long regarded her accomplished rival."
Upon which we cannot help observing, that we do not believe that Mary
was ever really cajoled by the deceitful forms of such royal letters, any more
than that she could ever have so far deceived herself, as to fancy that she really
felt any workings of nature within her own breast to love Elizabeth with such
ardour, as many of her own letters are known to express. She may have
wished to be upon good terms, and may have had a heart more inclined than
Elizabeth's to the cordialities of a sincere friendship ; but it is to betray great
ignorance of the forms of a Court and royal communications (especially in such
times as those were),* to suppose that Elizabeth's expressions of love and affec-
tion were decidedly more deceitful than those of her " accomplished" (certainly)
but not altogether artless " rival." It is impossible to suppose that she could
really love, or even be very well inclined towards a person whom she had been
constantly taught to regard as only a bastard child of that very Henry VIII. who
had done what he could to disinherit her, and, consequently, as a usurper of her
rights ; a heretic condemned by the Pope; one also whom she had never seen, and
yet, in the very letter she wrote to send by Lethington upon the above occasion,
Mary professes to be Elizabeth's " dearest sister ;" and as if that were not " eno'
her richt gude sister and loving cusine."t These things demand some attention
* " I wish," says Mr. Peyto, in a letter to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, in France, May 9, 1 560,
" that I may live to see as honest and sincere dealing between princes as between private friends;
but I fear me that day wold be too longe, and that ere it come my beard will be more graye than
nowe my head is by a great deale." — Forbes, i. 441, 2.
f In the petition of the Council to Elizabeth, March 23, 1560, [Forbes, i. 391.] are the follow-
ing strong expressions relative to the designs against her, and evil dispositions towards her,
as prevailing on the other side the water : —
" We do all certainly think, that the Queen of Scots, and for her sake, her husband, and the
House of Guise, be in their hearts mortal enemies to year Majesty's person. Hereupon it fol-
loweth that we cannot interpret the proceedings of the French otherwise but as the same do ma-
nifestly shew themselves, and as all other nations do judge thereof; and that they will never cease,
262 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
in a portion of our English history so important, and still so dark, and in which
not only the credit of Elizabeth, but of her great Minister, and through both, we
need not hesitate to say, the credit of England itself is so much at stake. We
can never too often repeat that it was not merely a conflict between two females,
two rival Queens, but between all the kingdoms of Europe, and all the princes
and statesmen of the age. Neither of these two Princesses were so much
responsible for the beginning of the quarrel as their fathers, progenitors, and
predecessors, their relatives, and the two parties into which their respective
countries were divided before either of them were born.
In the month of June, 1562, the Secretary, overcome as it would seem by the
weight of business at Court, and dissatisfied with the contentions in the Univer-
sity, seemed resolved to relinquish his high office of Chancellor of Cambridge.
His letter to the University is still preserved, being to the following effect : —
" June, 1562, 4 Eliz. After my hearty commendations, I do find causes,
daily more and more, moving me to render to the University the office which I
hold to be Chancellor thereof; and because you shall not think this manner of
speech to proceed of a careless disposition towards the same, I shall shortly
signify unto you some causes, as if I had leisure I could shew more.
" First, indeed, I am not meet for the office, having no learning to judge of
men learned, of which number that University ought to consist.
" Secondly, I have no leisure to hear the causes, and less leisure to promote
them, and, consequently, no opportunity to end them.
" Thirdly, I am troubled to hear how in that University a great part of the
Colleges are now of late become full of factions and contentions, and are like to
increase. The redress whereof cannot come from me, as it ought to do from
a Chancellor, because I can neither skill to judge of the controversies, (being
risen upon question of laws and private statutes,) nor can come thither to subdue
the same with my presence and with the authority of the office.
with their good wills, or without force of England, as long as your Majesty and the Scotish Queen
liveth, to permit your Majesty to live in an assured peace; but will, at the least, continue their
purposes by practice, either abroad or in this your realm, or in both."
However shocking it may be to modern feelings to read such a denunciation of a whole family,
yet there is nothing in it that exceeds our belief of its having been perfectly true at the time. This
was the school in which Mary had been brought up, and here was the root of all the enmity shewn
to her on the part of Elizabeth and England, not in the way of spite, but of defence. The whole
petition of the Council should be read by those who would wish to understand the true bearings
of one of the most perplexed histories of human transactions.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 263
" Lastly, which most of all I lament, I cannot find such care in the heads of
houses there to supply my lack, as I hoped for, to the ruling of inordinate youth,
to the observation of good order, and increase of learning and knowledge of God.
For I see (if the wiser sort that have authority will not join earnestly together
to overrule the licentious part of youth, in breaking orders, and the stubbornness
of others that malign and deprave the ecclesiastical orders established by law in
this realm) I shall shortly hear no good or comfortable report from thence.
And to keep an office of authority, by which these disorders may be remedied,
and not to use it, is to betray the safety of the same whereof I have some
conscience.
" Wherefore, with all my heart, I think it meet you should appoint this room
to some one such as may come thither and visit the state thereof, and to set
things in frame ; and yet to keep a sure account of me, that 1 will remain as
careful and willing to do good to the University, and to every member thereof,
as I am now.
" And so I end — praying you all to accept this my perplexed writing and
complaint to proceed of a careful mind that I bear to that honorable and
dear body of the University; whereof, although I was once but a simple, small,
unlearned, and low member, yet have I as great plenty of natural humour
of love towards the same, as any other that hath by degrees been rewarded to be
in the highest place of that body ; which comparison I make, not to impair the
love of any other, but to express mine own : and so, for this time, I bid you all
right heartily well to fare. From the Court, the ... of June, MDLXII.
" Your assured to use and command,
" To the Vice-Chancellor, &c." " W. CECI L."
But the University would not listen to the proposal, if it could possibly
be avoided. His loss they accounted immedicabile vulnus, a wound and sore, not
to be healed. They, therefore, in great affliction, answered his letter, and sent
their answer by two Heads of Houses, with other letters to the Archbishop and
Dr. Walter Haddon, Master of the Requests, imploring their interposition, and
promising a speedy and visible reformation if their prayers should succeed.
The Archbishop and Dr. Haddon could not refuse to comply with the wishes of
the University, and, therefore, both of them wrote letters to the Secretary, and
gave them to the messengers to convey to him, with the answer to his own, sent
by the University ; and by these means he was prevailed upon to continue in the
264 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
office, not, however, without sending down injunctions for the reforming the
scholars in divers things wanting. — See Strypes Life of Parker, and Peck's
Desiderata Curiosa, Lib. vii. No. xiii.
The Queen this year began to give aid to the French Protestants, but not as
in rebellion against their lawful Sovereign, her aid being directed, as it was
alleged, rather to the deliverance of the King, Queen, and Princes of the
Blood, from the thraldom of the Princes of the House of Lorrain. The history
of the English intervention, at this particular time, is certainly very remarkable,
and, in general, very little understood, i The Scottish Protestants having been
supported against those who held the reins of government in that country, it "has
been generally thought that the French Protestants were assisted by Elizabeth
upon exactly the same grounds, and that her interference with other countries
constantly tended to uphold the subject against the Sovereign, to the disturbance
of her neighbours, upon principles very obnoxious, if directed against herself; for
she was certainly no lover of rebellious subjects ; but, as the Scottish Protestants
had at their head some of the highest natural born subjects of the realm, so the
Protestants of France, or Hugonots, as they are most commonly called, had
on their side such high and important personages, that, independent of all other
considerations, they might reasonably be accounted to have the good of their
country at heart, and, indeed, the independence of the Crown. It may, in truth,
be said of Protestantism in general, wherever it had the least chance of prevailing,
that it had not only a tendency to rescue the civil and religious liberties of man-
kind from an unbearable thraldom, but that, in regard to the struggle it had to
undergo in the several states of Europe, it was constantly opposed to an
unbending tyranny, as well civil as ecclesiastical. It had generally a Court of
Inquisition watching its progress, under rulers and ministers quite ready to
approve its decisions, and cause its sentences to be carried into execution.*
* This sentence was written before I had read the following passage in Bayle[Ail. Francois de
Lorraine] : —
" Peu s'en falut qu'ils n'etablissent en France le Tribunal de 1'Inquisition; ils y travaillerent de
toute leur force, et il falut que pour detourner ce coup le Chancelier s'avisat de proposer au Roi
j'Edit de Romorantin, tres rigoureux centre ceux de la Religion — c'est done a ces deux freres
qu'on peut imputer tous les malheurs des Guerres civiles de ce tems-la ils s'oposerenta la liberte
de conscience des Protestants, ils fomenterent la persecution, ils entretinrent dans le Roiaume
1'esprit sanguinaire, centre le droit essentiel, et le plus inalienable dout I'homme peut jouir, et
celui que les Souverains doivent regarder comme le plus inviolable." — Note C. tome ii. 648. see
note G. 649.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. ' 265
England, under the administration, as it has been called, of Queen Elizabeth's
great Minister, the subject of this Memoir, has long borne the blame of wantonly
exciting disturbances and confusion in other countries, to secure peace and
tranquillity at home ; but, indeed, as we endeavoured to shew at the very
commencement of our undertaking, there was no want of disturbance or con-
fusion in all the countries of Europe, at that period, without the intervention of
England, nor was there any chance of such disturbances being allayed amongst
her more immediate neighbours, or the rival parties reconciled, except, perhaps,
for the sole purpose and design of bringing a greater force against England.
The situation of France in the first years of the reign of Charles IX. was,
perhaps, the most confused and extraordinary that could possibly be conceived,
there being three parties struggling for the mastery, sometimes separately, but,
for the most part, two against one. We may form some idea of the hetero-
geneous constitution of the Government from the following account : The
Regency was confirmed in no very regular or formal manner on the Queen
Mother, enemy to the Guises, and who, to combat their power, had called in the
Constable Montmorency, heretofore the marked opponent of the Duke of Guise,
and caused him to be appointed generalissimo of the forces. The superintendence
of the finances, in the meanwhile, was committed to the Cardinal of Lorrain ;
and the King of Navarre, brother to the Prince of Conde,* who had a fair
claim to be Regent, and who had been expected to stand at the head of the
Hugonots, and, in conjunction with them, to maintain the dignity of the Princes
of the blood, after ceding, as it were, the Regency to the Queen, condescended
to accept the comparatively subordinate office of Lieutenant-General of the
kingdom; he was even drawn farther into the toils of the Guisian faction after-
wards, so as to induce the Queen to form an union with the other Princes of the
Having spoken of the edict of Romorantin, it may be well to see what Millot says of it in his
Hist. Mod. torn. ii. 362, and compare the course taken by the Chancellor de 1'Hopital with what
is said in our first volume of Cecil's intimacy with Cardinal Pole.
* The conspiracy which broke out at Amboise, March 1559-60, to wrest the Government out
of the hands of the Guises, during the life of Francis II., had nearly been fatal to the Prince of
Conde ; being discovered before it could take effect, the Guises had power enough not only to
charge him with being at the head of it, but to have him tried by the Estates assembled at Orleans,
Nov. 1560, and condemned to die, the execution being even fixed for the 10th of December.
On the death of Francis, which happened on the 5th of that very month, and the accession
of Charles IX., he was released by the latter, but only to place himself afresh, as it turned out,
at the head of the Protestants, upon receiving additional provocation.
VOL. II. 2 M
266 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
blood, and to cause an edict to be passed, for permitting the Hugonots to hold
their meetings in the suburbs of the town, upon condition of delivering up to
the Catholics the Churches they had possession of in the towns. This was called
the edict of January, of which so much is said in the letters of Throckmorton.
Camden relates that Elizabeth had been informed, that, to secure the King of
Navarre, the Guises had secretly offered to him the hand of their niece the
Queen of Scots, and the kingdom of England in dowry ; engaging also, with
the aid of Spain, to procure the Pope to dissolve his marriage with Jeanne
d'Albret, his then wife, Queen of Navarre, the firm and constant friend of the
Protestants ; and that this was the occasion of the suspension of the interview
between Mary and Elizabeth, on the part of the latter.
From this account we may well perceive what grounds there were for dis-
turbance and confusion in France, if left entirely to its own politics, and we
may guess how much this confusion was capable of increase, if what Bayle has
collected concerning the two parties be true ; namely, that Religion, after all,
was but a colour or pretence for what was chiefly, if not entirely, a political
struggle ; that, in fact, the Guisians would have become Hugonots, and the
Condeians Catholics, had such changes promised, at any time, to have given
them an advantage over their adversaries in the State. It is a curious thing
that is alleged by a Protestant writer of the times, that the Pope had observed to .
the Bishop of Au.rerre, that he would have given a hundred thousand crowns
to have had the Cardinal de Lorrain become a Hugonot, being assured that
the enmity borne to him by that party would immediately have made the latter
all good Catholics. It is certain that the hatred in which the Guises were held
by Catherine de Medicis had, at one time, nearly made a Protestant of the
niece of Leo X. ; she governed herself by the old maxim of all confusion, " divide
et impera." " Catherine de Medicis," says Millot, " dont toutes les vues se
portoient a la domination, dont Fame artificiense se plioit a toutes les circum-
stances, dont la maxime favorite etoit de diviser pour regner," &c. — Hist. Mod.
T. ii. 361, 2. The whole passage is worth reading by those who think
Elizabeth and her great Minister were the principal authors of confusion in
the sixteenth century. This liberal and judicious writer, indeed, begins his
Eleventh Epoque (from the year 1559 to the reign of Henry IV.) with a passage
from de Thou, lamenting the necessity he felt himself under of describing the
horrible state of his distracted country at this time, and to expose the miseries
to which it was subjected for the space of forty years by the errors and vices of
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 267
the great people, and the pernicious counsels of its rulers and ministers ; and
he adds the following remark of his own : " Je cite volontiers ces paroles d'un
grand homme, parce que meme dans notre siecle la verite historique trouve des
censeurs toujours prets a condamner ce qu' ils ignorent, ou ce qu' une fausse
politique leur fait cacher."* There were two parties all the while in France
itself that stood quite as much in awe of the ambitious designs of the Guises as
England could do. It was not difficult, therefore, for England to decide upon
the part she was to take if she looked only to her own security ; the more
powerful the Guises should become in the neighbouring kingdom, the greater
danger to herself, as well from France as from Scotland.
The opening, therefore, that was made for the interference of England in the
struggle now on foot, was not merely to support the Protestants against the
Catholics, much less subjects in rebellion, against their sovereign, but, in oppo-
sition to a foreign faction, (for the Guises were foreigners in France, — see M.
de Kcralio, ii. 507.) to give aid to the Princes of the blood, having the Prince of
Gonde, brother to the King of Navarre, at their head, and even to rescue the King
himself, the Queen Regent, and the King of Navarre, if possible, from the
overbearing influence and insatiable ambition of the Princes of Lorrain.'\ It
was no wonder that these " garboils in France," to use an expression of our
Ambassador there, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, should interrupt the projected
interview of the two Queens, Mary being unhappily so closely connected with
the principal authors of the above confusion and alarm to France, England, and
Scotland .
It would be going out of our way to enter farther into the history of the
affairs of France, than as they were a continual object of care and attention to
the Secretary. The edict of January, of which we have spoken, as the fruit of
* See also the History of Elizabeth by Madlle. de Keralio, and Ferrand's Esprit de 1' Histoire,
torn. iii. 310.
t " Les plus grands Panegyristes de ce Due (Francois) de Guise," says Bayle, " ne sauroient le
disculper d'une tres-injuste, et tres-violente usurpation ; car ce n' est pas seulement 1'autorite
souveraine que Ton usurpe, on peut aussi meriter le nom odieux d'usurpateur, lors qu' on
s" empare de la puissance qui n 'est due qu' aux Princes du sang, et qu' on les eloigne de la part
qu' ils doivent avoir au gouvernement de 1' Etat sous un Roi mineur ; Or c' estce que firent les
Guises sous le Regne de Francois II. mari de leur niece, en abusant de la foiblesse de ce Prince,
sans garder aucunes mesures de bienfeance, on veut meme qu' ils aient eu dessein de faire
mourir les premiers Princes du sang." — The last fact has the support, in Bayle's Notes, of a very
curious story, extracted from a Life of the Due de Guise, published at Paris, 1681.
2fi8 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
an accidental reconciliation between the Queen Mother and the Princes of the
blood, gave such spirits to the Protestants, that, notwithstanding the persecutions
that had taken place since the affair of Amboise* they soon shewed themselves
in greater numbers, and, having the Prince of Conde and the Colignis again at
their head, behaved themselves apparently with such an undaunted confidence
as greatly to excite the jealousy of the Guises. At the small town of Vassi, in
Champagne, a rencontre taking place between the servants of the Duke of Guise
and some of the Hugonots assembled for worship in a barn, brought the Duke
himself to the spot, where being hurt with a stone, the resentment of his servants
was raised to so high a pitch, as to terminate in the slaughter of about sixty of
the Protestants ; the rest, with their minister, who was also wounded, being put to
flight. This stands recorded in history as the massacre of Vassifi a transaction
differently represented by the opposite parties ; the one regarding it as a premedi-
tated,^ unprovoked assault on the Hugonots, the other as only an accidental fracas.
* The conspiracy of Amboisc, as explained by those who were engaged in it, had for its object
exactly what the Queen and English Council professed to have in view, in the succours sent to
the Prince of Conde ; this may plainly be seen from what Mad"c. de Keralio relates of the Baron de
Castelnau in the following passage: — " Les conjures ne formerent point le coupable projet de
la revoke et de la trahison qu' on osa leur imputer; ils n' avouerent que le dessein de se saisir
des Guiic, et de leur faire leur proces, cornme perturbateurs du repos de 1'Etat. Quoiqu' on les
ait accuses de projets criminels, on ne les a jamais prouves ; le Baron de Castelnau, 1' un des
plus braves liommes de ce temps, entendant lire sa sentence, qui le condamnoit pour crime de leze
Majeste s'ecria vivement, " Je n'ai jaimais attente sur la personne du Roi, ni de la Reine, ni de la
Reinemere, ni de sesfreres, nides Princes du sang, ni d'aucun de cenx dont les loix ordonnent de
reverer la Majeste, si Ton pretend que je sois coupable de ce crime, pour avoir pris les armes
contre les Guises, ces etrangers qui out usurpe le governement sur les Princes du sang, il faut
auparavant les declarer rois." — Elizabeth and her great Minister are so constantly accused of
creating disturbances in other countries, and abetting subjects in rebellion against their proper
sovereign, that it is well to shew, that the disturbances with which they interfered did not originate
with them, and that the succours they afforded to one party against the other, were to the
defence of the persecuted, and of ancient rights and liberties against the encroachments of inor-
dinate ambition, usurped power, and the most relentless bigotry; and it should be constantly
recollected, that the Guises were, in reality, foreigners in France as well as in Scotland : the dis-.
turbance of both countries may be said to have originated with them.
t 1562. "March 1. The slaughter of Vassy, at which time the troubles of France began."—
Lord Burg/iley's Diary.
t See Bayle, art. Francois de Lorrain, Note D. The situation of Vassi was such as to excite,
in a very particular manner, the jealousy of the Guises ; it was near the family estate and residence
of Joimillt, where the Duchess Dowager lived, who had an apprehension that if Calvinism got a
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 269
The Catholics hailed it as a sort of triumph over the famous edict of January,
and thereby exasperated the Prince of Conde and his party, who could not be
expected to do less than meditate some retaliation ; the mere probability of
which, as though the quarrel itself had been a concerted measure of the Guises,
was seized upon by the Duke as an occasion for more strictly securing the
person of the young King, who, with the Queen his mother, saw himself most
reluctantly placed under the power and authority of what was denominated the
Triumvirate, the Queen herself being brought into great jeopardy by a con-
spiracy to deprive her of the Regency. And here we cannot help remarking,
that the Triumvirate, of which we have just spoken, was as strong an instance,
perhaps, as any that could be given, of the confusion of parties at that time in
France. There had been no greater opposer of the Guises than the Constable ;
so much so, as to have been redeemed from captivity, as it were, by Henry II.,
on purpose to support that King against them. On occasion of the present
troubles, he had been solicited to join the Queen, and afterwards more earnestly
to associate himself with the Prince of Conde and the Colignis, as likely to give
an important strength to their party ; but as his attachment to the Catholic
Religion was not to be shaken, this very appeal of the party at the head of the
Hugonots threw him into the arms of the Guises. The Duke of Guise and his
son, the Prince of Joinville, watching their opportunity, with the aid of the Mare-
chal de St. Andre, drew him entirely over to their side. The Duke and the
Constable became entirely reconciled, communicated together at the same altar,
and with the Marechal de St. Andre, who had assisted in bringing about
the agreement, formed that Triumvirate mentioned above. J In the meanwhile,
the Prince of Conde with the Hugonots seized upon the city of Orleans, and
thereby placed themselves in a situation of marked and open hostility, affirming in
footing so nigh, she should be unable to keep it out of Joinville. The Duke was probably resolved,
if possible, to frustrate the effects of the edict of January. — See Bayle's citations from Davila.
* To shew how difficult it is to arrive at the exact truth of any historical events, and the neces-
sity of scrutinizing facts as closely as possible, after trusting to Daniel, Millot, and other French
writers, who had positively spoken of the Marechal de St. Andre as the third person of the
famous Triumvirate, I found in the Dictionaire Historique, under the art. Antoine de Navarre,
that the latter was one of the Triumvirate with the Due de Guise and the Constable; this puzzled
me for some time, as it was not unlikely that in compliment to the King of Navarre he might
have been admitted as one of that confederacy, but on turning to the art. Albon in the same Dic-
tionaire, I found the case to be as Daniel and others had represented, and that, in fact, Albon,
Marquis de Fronsac, Marechal de St. Andre, was one of the Triumvirs.
270 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
their manifestoes, that they took arms only in resentment of the violation of the
edict of January, and to deliver the King from the captivity in which he was
detained. This threw the whole kingdom into a blaze ; many associated them-
selves to the Prince, under an obligation to render him obedience till the
King should come of age, while an army was prepared to march against him
under the command of his apostate brother the King of Navarre, accompanied
by the Duke of Guise, the Constable Montmorency, and the young King,
whom they carried with them, as it were, in custody.*
It was in this posture of affairs that Elizabeth's assistance was first publicly
afforded to the Prince of Conde and the Hugonots, and a treaty formally
concludedjf by which she engaged to assist them with all her forces and
certain subsidies, upon condition that they would deliver up to her, for the
security of her troops, Havre-de-Grace, and that she should not be obliged to
resign it, till the Prince of Conde should have procured for her the restitution
of Calais.
But of the part taken by England, there is a very good, though certainly
not a very clear explanation, to be seen in certain instructions sent to Throck-
morton, to be communicated to the Queen Mother, Aug. 17, 1562, many
months before the edict of January, and the affair at Vassi.
" To conclude, we are forced to leave to the wisdom of our good sister the
Queen Mother, to consider of our opinion conceived of these matters, what she
shall think meet to be done for the staying of these great troubles likely to
follow ; for that we cannot, without some note of temerity, enter to give any
advice, except we were more particularly informed of the whole proceedings,
and the humours of both these parties, betwixt whom we think the controversy
*Mad"e. deKeralio has given a lively picture of the confusion of this conflict: — " II yavoit en France
quatorze armees opposees les unes aux autres, dans lesquelles on voyoit combattre les fils contre
leurs peres, les freres contre leurs freres, les amis contre leurs amis, les vieillards, les femmes, et
les enfans, renfermfs dans V interieur des villes, n'osoient lever les mains an del pour demander la vic-
toire," with much more to the same effect, torn. iii. 150. We cannot refrain from adding the
compliment this sagacious writer has paid to our country at this particular period: " L' Angleterre
etoit alors la premiere puissance de 1'Europe, la plus florissante, et la plus paisible, etant gou-
vernee par le plus sage des souverains. Elizabeth fut Phonneur le rempart et 1'appui des Pro-
testans persecutes dans tous les etats, elle unit constamment dans toutes ses negociations les
interets des infortunes aux siens, et ajouta au bonheur de son regne, la gloire d' avoir eu pour
objet le bien de I'humanite." 157.
t See this Convention. — Forbes, ii. 48.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 271
resteth ; considering it is not granted us to understand the same, we can do no
more but, as one that hath an interest with other Christian princes in the
public weal of Christendom, conceive an inward compassion in our mind for
the trouble thereof, and a natural care for our own preservation ; and so, con-
sequently, wish well to all these causes generally, and foresee our own surety
particularly." — Forbes, ii. 25.
There is something in this like a burlesque upon state papers, but perhaps
the more honest on that account. In the notorious perplexity of French politics
at this time, it was utterly impossible to understand the views of the different
parties, but there was no difficulty in foreseeing the dangers to England, from
a certain result and issue of matters, and no want of care to provide accordingly
for her surety, by siding with those most adverse to the tyranny of the Guises ;*
among whom, in fact, were the King, the Queen Regent, and all the Princes of the
blood ;f as appears from the terms of the instructions given to Sir Thomas Smith.
" Secondly, you shall say, that we have well perceived from the beginning, and
so do more and more, that the beginners of these troubles in that country are
not disposed of themselves to have any end made of their troubles, but such as
shall be dangerous to the King and his people : and therewith also we evidently
* The beginning of the Convention on the part of the Prince of Conde is very remarkable.
" Illustrissimus Princeps de Conde ad defendendum Rothomagum, Diepe, et Havre de Grace
in Normandia, et eorundem oppidorum habitatores, aliosque serenissimi Francorum Regis
subditos qui sese in hsec oppida receperunt, a csede et intentu qui in eos a Duce GUISIO, ejus
fratribus, et aliis GDISIAN^: Factionis hominibus crudeliter intentatus est; et pro auxilio, &c.
In a despatch to Spain, Sep. 22, 1652, the Queen thus expresses herself to Philip in regard
to the affairs of France: —
" Lastly, which toucheth us most nearly and properly, we perceived that the Duke of Guise,
and his House, was the principal head of one part, and that they daily so increased their force,
as in the end they became commanders of all things in France — and thereupon such manner of
hostile dealing used, in diverse sorts, against our subjects, as we were constrained to look about
us, what peril might ensue to our own estate and country." — Forbes, ii. 53.
f Mad"c. de Keralio, speaking of the imprisonment and sentence passed on the Prince of Conde,
after the affair of Amboise, thus describes the opposition between the Hugonots and Guisians:
•' La prison du Prince de Conde, et son execution prochaine, tenoient en suspens toute 1'Europe
Qui n'eut considere avec etonnement, d'un cote les efforts d'une faction affoiblie par les supplices
et les massacres, mais soutenue par les premieres tetes de la nation ; de I'autre, la preponderance d'un
parti forme par des Grangers aux gages de la France, qui trahissant tous les droits de 1'hospitalite,
s'etoient rendus maitres de 1'etat, et faisoient a leur gre couler le sang des plus braves et des
meilleurs citoyens !"
272 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
see, that by their proceedings our danger is so joined with his, as we cannot but
have regard thereunto ; and upon these two grounds, specially it is, to procure
the preservation of the King and his people in these his tender years, and to
divert the dangers that otherwise might follow to our own estate, we are con-
strained to use such means as we do."31
The assistance given therefore to the Hugonots of France was, in many
respects, very similar to the case of Scotland ; in both instances, the tyranny of
the Guises was the real object of contention, not necessarily to the overthrow of
the royal authority, in either country, nor with any designs absolutely inimical
to the peace and tranquillity of France or Scotland, but, in conjunction with
some of the greatest men in the nation, to preserve their rights and liberty,
• against an usurping and domineering party, hostile to the best interests of their
native country. f It was in the month of October, 1562, that the Secretary
received from his great friend, Sir Thomas Smith, who had been dispatched to
France as an Ambassador, in aid of Throckmorton (returning on a leave of
absence), the following piece of information : the letter is dated from Paris,
Oct. 18, 15G2. "You perceive what Sir Nicholas [Throckmorton] doth think
of their Ambassador in England, and I am certainly advertised by divers Scots,
that there be divers sent already, and more to be sent, to move the Queen of
Scots to break with you, and to make war out of hand." Whether this informa-
tion were true or not, it serves to shew, how generally Scotland was held to be
connected with the affairs of France, while under the power and influence of
the Guises ; but in the allusion to the Ambassador in England, and Sir
* See the declaration, from a copy in the Secretary's own hand, of the causes which moved the
Queen [Elizabeth] to take arms. — Forbes, ii. 69. In Lord Burghley's diary, we find, under the
date of Sep. 22, 1562, the following entries: " the Queen of England took into her protection
the Prince of Conde and his party." " The same time a contract between the Queen's Majesty
and the Prince of Conde, M. de Rohan, the Admirall of France, de Gramont, M. de Pyennes,
Bryckmoth, Marq; for delivery of Newhaven, and to receive 100,000 crowns." "Sep. 27, The
Queen Majesty took into her protection the French King's subjects in Normandy, being oppressed
by the tyranny of the House of Guise, and published a declaration, printed."
t The resemblance of the two cases is noticed in the Queen's Manifesto in the following terms :
[Forbes, ii. 79.] " Sur ce souvenants, comment puis naguaires nous ayt advise a deiivrer le peuple
et subjects de la lloyne d' Ecosse, estans lors en la meme misere et adversit6 par la semblable
persecution d' icelle Maisonde GUISE, du danger, destruction, et ruine; les constraindre par tel
moyen a 1'obeissance de leur Royne, de laquelle presentement elle Jouit." See also the Queen's
answer to the second declaration of Monsieur de Foix, corrected by Cecil. — Forbes, ii. 190, 191.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 273
Nicholas Throckmorton's opinion, he plainly refers to a letter from the latter,
to Queen Elizabeth, only three days before, and in which is the following
passage :
" The House of Guise, with the advice of the Cardinal of Ferrare, and the
Spanish Ambassador here, have lately dispatched Villemont and La Crocque,
servants to the Queen of Scotland, to pass through your Majesty's realm, and
there to make some trouble if they see any opportunity ; and, likewise, to
exasperate the Queen of Scotland and her Papistical Council, to make some
trouble in your Majesty's realm upon the frontier, and also to do what they can
to deprive the Earl of Mar, Secretary Lethington, and all others which favour
the Protestant religion, of their credit and authority about the said Queen
of Scotland."*
The Cardinal of Ferrara, who was then the Pope's Legate in France, seems
to have been a very suspicious characterf to many of Elizabeth's Council, so as
to render them very jealous of Sir Thomas Smith's holding any conferences with
him ; of which the Secretary found it necessary, in a private and friendly man-
ner, to give him intimation in a letter to the following effect : " But to write
plainly and friendly unto you, as I would you should if our places were changed,
the most here have misliked that you have treated with the Legate, and seem
willing that you should have been reprimanded therefore. But therein I and
others unto your good meaning have so tempered the cause, as thereof you shall
hear no otherwise, except it be by me and some others your good friends."
We may judge from this, how hard a task the Secretary had upon his hands,
even with the Council. It could not be the Philipplans who were thus
adverse to the Legate ; another party was in all likelihood at work, of whom
we shall have more to say hereafter ; at all events, it may serve to shew what
a confusion of parties there was in almost all the states of Europe, and how
* He also notices some proceedings to disturb Ireland, through the Spanish Minister, the Bishop
of Aquila, and in the same letter informs the Queen of a project on foot by the Cardinal of
Lorrain, to marry his niece the Queen of Scots to Ferdinand second son of the Emperor, to
procure the Empire for the latter, to the disappointment of Maximilian, and to conclude with the
Emperor a Papistical league against all heretics.
f He was the son of Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Alexander VI., the impure offspring of a
most horrible father; the Cardinal was reminded of the impurities of both, in very severe libels
published against him, while in France, and which made him lower his tone greatly. See Jurieus
History of the Council of Trent.
VOL. II. 2 N
274 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1662.
many dangers England, and those who had to administer her concerns, con-
stantly had to guard against.*
There are extant such full accounts of the views of the English Government,
in aiding the cause of those opposed to the Guisian faction in France at this
period, that it is almost needless to do more than refer to them as they are
to be found in Forbes's View of the Public Transactions in the Reign of
Elizabeth, where most of the memorials, state-papers,! and correspondence of
the several ministers, from the very commencement of the Queen's reign to the
middle of the year 1563, are to be seen at length. Of the conspicuous and
prominent, but very delicate and troublesome situation in which the Secretary
was. placed, as the channel of all communications, they afford abundant and
sufficient proofs. That the power of the Guises was the object to which the
attention of the English Government was almost solely directed is most certain ;
but in taking a position in France, under all appearances of hostility, the
explanation given went to these three points : that it was not in opposition
to the King of France, but rather in support of his just rights ; that the
care of his person and kingdom had been assigned by the three Estates, not
to the Guises, but to the Princes of the blood, whose lawful authority, therefore,
and dignity, the Guises were seeking to subvert, disparage, or supersede; and,
finally, that though the English troops had taken possession of certain places in
* At this very time, Throckmorton was supposed to be pursuing some by-ends, and anxious,
if he could, to discredit the mission of Smith. — See Strypes Life of Sir Thomas Smith, ch. viii.
f Frequent allusion being made in these Papers to the severe sufferings of the Protestants
under the tyranny of the Guises, we shall extract the following account of a succession of exe-
cutions, to be read in one ,of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton's letters to the Queen, dated from
Amboise, March 21, 1559. — Forbes, \. 378. "This heat caused upon a sudden a sharp deter-
mination to minister justice ; and the two last taken were the same forenoon hanged, and two
others for company ; and afterwards the same day divers were taken, and in the evening nine
more were hanged ; all which died very assuredly and constantly for religion, in singing of
psalms. Divers were drowned in sacks, and some appointed to the wheel ; amongst all those
that were taken, Mons. de Sanfar, a knight of th' order, found twenty-five in a house together;
and because they would not come forth he set the house on fire. Whereupon they issued, and
one of them, seeing his fellows taken, returned back and burned himself. The xviith of this present
there were twenty-two of these rebels drowned in sacks, and the xviiith of the same, at night,
twenty-five more. Among all these which be taken there be eighteen of the bravest captains of
France. As they be taken they come, before the Council, and there (after they be questioned
withal and examined) they be one after another condemned to die." The above, it should be
added, relates to the Conspiracy of Amboise, which took place in March, 1559-60.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 275
France, without the express consent of the King, they were quietly put into
their hands by those who held them under the King's appointment and
authority, and, in fact, to assist in restoring the King to his proper freedom of
action. The recovery of Calais, as a remote object, was certainly a material
point in the negotiation, but the prospect of success seems to have been very
small, and, in fact, things did not terminate as might have been once fondly
expected. The command of Newhaven, as it was then generally called by the
English,* was given to the Earl of Warwick, the elder brother of Leicester,
and it must, we think, be acknowledged by all who may be at the pains to
read his correspondence with the Government, as extant in Forbes 's Collection,
that no subject could have borne up with more courage and patience against a
succession of adverse and very trying circumstances, than it fell to the lot of
this noble earl to do. The occupation of Havre-de-Grace by the English
troops, was very naturally the occasion of drawing the army opposed to the
Prince of Conde into Normandy, sooner than would probably otherwise have
been the case. The Queen Mother was exceedingly angry with the Prince for
having entered into the treaty with Elizabeth, upon the condition of any such
surrender ; and, to prevent the English passing further into the kingdom, per-
suaded the King of Navarre, the Duke of Guise, and the Constable, to turn
their arms against Rouen before they laid siege, as had been proposed, to
Orleans. Her counsel in this instance was listened to, and Rouen besieged
towards the end of September, 1662; about 2000 of the English troops from
Havre and Dieppe are said to have previously arrived there to strengthen the
garrison. Though bravely defended at first, it was not possible to retain it
long against the forces opposed to it, commanded principally by the King of
Navarre, but it was attended with one loss on the part of the besieging army,
which has rendered it very memorable. For it was here that, in the 45th of
age, this unfortunate Sovereign, a brave, but injudicious Prince, received a
wound which soon terminated his life. It was before the conclusion of the
year, viz., on the 19th of December, that the first serious engagement between
the opposing armies of Catholics and Calvinists took place, commonly
called the battle of Dreux ; of which an account is to be read in many
authors. Great bravery was displayed on both sides, but it terminated in
favour of the Catholics, in the capture of the Prince of Conde on one
* Havre-de-Grace.
276 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1662.
side,* and of the Constable on the other ; though the Catholics kept the field,
the army opposed to them was ably preserved by the Admiral [ColignL} In this
battle, another eminent person, one indeed of the famous Triumvirate, lost his
life, the Marechal de St. Andre ; whose horse being killed under him, is said
to have been barbarously shot with a pistol, by a person who owed him a private
grudge.
Before we advert to what was passing at home at this time, in regard to the
settlement of the Church (a subject which appears, as much and as constantly
as all other public concerns, to have occupied the mind, or rather perhaps we
should say, to have been forced upon the attention of the vigilant and indefa-
tigable Secretary), we cannot omit to notice the very curious account given by
Camden, of a visit the Queen received from O'Neale of Ireland ; Shan, or John
O'Neale, as he was called, the true and lawful son of that very Con O'Neale,
surnamed Bacco, or the Lame, whom Henry VIII. had created Earl of Tyrone, and
with whose chaplains, the subject of this Memoir, as related in our first volume,
held that memorable disputation, which led to his Jirst introduction at Court.
Shan, or John, it seems, having made away with his base brother, Matthew,
Baron of Dungannon, who, upon a pretence of his being legitimate, had
obtained some advantages over him at the hands of his father, despoiled the
latter of all rule, leaving him to die of grief, after having taken on him the title
of O'Neale, by a strange mode of election, that of throwing his shoe over his
head ; this half-savage chieftain thought to run before the law, by at once
breaking out into an open rebellion ; but a considerable English force being
* The English minister, Throckmorton, who was present unarmed at this battle, was taken
prisoner as well as the Prince of Conde. The account he sent of it to the Queen is very
curious: he gives great credit to the Duke of Guise, and throws no small blame on many of
the Prince's army ; and yet it would seem that the victory (if it were decidedly such) was hard
gained by the Duke. On the 25th of Dec., Throckmorton dined with the Duke, and had a
long conference with him concerning the part taken by Elizabeth in the French quarrels. The
letter also contains an account of communications with the Admiral, who was not so dis-
comfited by the issue of the battle, or even the capture of the Prince, as to make concessions.
The letter is dated from St. Denis, Jan. 3, 1562-3. It was after this battle that the Prince of
Conde and the Duke of Guise are said to have actually occupied one bed. The Prince
acknowledged that he never closed his eyes, but that the Duke slept soundly all the night,
with a confidence and greatness of soul, which might well incline us to lament that his
ambition should have been the ruin of a man capable, otherwise, of passing for a model of
heroism.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 277
sent against him, after some slight skirmishes, he laid down his arms, by the
advice of his relative, the Earl of Kildare, promising to make a journey into
England, to beg the Queen's pardon ; a promise which he put in execution this
year, and the following is Camden's account of it, who was living at the time,
and though probably too young to have seen the sight, yet we may be pretty
certain, that the scene, extraordinary as it certainly was, must have passed
immediately under the eyes of the Secretary.
" Now was Shan O'Neal come out of Ireland, to perform what he had pro-
mised a year before, with a guard of ax-bearing galloglasses,* bare-headed,
with curled hair hanging down, yellow surplices dyed with saffron, long
sleeves, short coats and hairy mantles, whom the English people gazed at with
no less admiration than now-a-days they do them of China and America ; he
being received with all kindness, and falling down at the Queen's feet, con-
fessed his crime and rebellion with howling, and obtained pardon. Being
gently asked by what right he had excluded Hugh, his brother Matthew's son,
out of his forefather's inheritance, he answered fiercely (as he had done before
in Ireland), ' By very good right, to wit, that he, being the certain and lawful
son and heir of Con, as born of his lawful wife, had entered upon his father's
inheritance : that Matthew was the son of a blacksmith of Dundalk, born after
his marriage with his wife Alison, but by his mother cunningly obtruded upon
Con for his son, to bereave him of his inheritance and dignity of O'Neal: which
though he endured, yet nqne other of the house of the O'Neal's would ever
suffer it. That the surrender which his father had made to Henry Eighth, and
the re-delivery which the King made back again to him, by his Letters-Patent,
were as good as nothing ; forasmuch as Con had no estate in that which he sur-
rendered, but for life, nor could surrender it without the consent of the nobility
and people, by whom he was elected to the honour of O'Neal ; for his part he
was, by the law of God and man, the certain heir, to wit, the eldest son of his
father, begotten in lawful wedlock, and by joint consent of the nobility and
people designed O'Neal, according to the law of that country, called Tanistry,
by which a man of ripe age is to be preferred before a child, and the uncle
before that nephew, whose grandfather surviveth the fathers. Neither did he
usurp any authority over the nobility of Ulster, than what his forefathers in
* Gallowglasses. Heavy-armed foot soldiers of Ireland and the western isles.
Nares's Glossary. Macbeth i. 2, 2 Hen. VI. iv. 9.
278 MEMO.IRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1562.
ancient times, had exercised by their own right, as he was able to prove by good
evidence.' Which matters, forasmuch as the Queen gave credit unto, he was
sent home again with honour, and for a while performed stout and faithful
service against the Hebridian Rovers."
The year 1562 was distinguished by many important circumstances relating
to the Church, and its more permanent establishment on the footing of the
Reformation. In vindication of which, there appeared at this -time, not merely
as a private publication, but with the sanction of the College of Divines, con-
cerned in the revisal of the Liturgy, the consent of the Bishops and whole
Clergy, the Queen's license, and the approbation of many learned foreigners,*
the famous APOLOGY of the learned Bishop JEWEL. It was written in Latin,|
as a defence of the Church of England, which might be read and perused in
all parts of Europe in the very original ; but indeed it was not long before
various translations were made of it, into French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch,
and, before two years were passed, into our own language by the hand of a
person we are more particularly bound to mention, the sister of Lady Cecil, and
wife of the Lord Keeper, Lady Bacon. An undertaking so ably and so correctly
performed, as to have been, we are told, more commonly cited afterwards by
the worthy Bishop himself, than his own original Latin. J The Apology § being
not only still extant, but exceedingly well known to all the learned members of
our admirable Church, we need not dwell largely either upon its contents or
its merits. Its importance must ever be the same, as long as Protestantism
* See particularly P. Martyr's letter to him, in Strype's Annals, i. 428-9.
f Under the following title : " Apologia Ecclesia Anglicanse, authore Joanne Juello, Episcopo
Sarisburiensi." It was, some time before its publication, sent to the Secretary Cecil for his
judgment, and the approbation of the Queen.
J He made use of this version alone, we are told, in his Defence of the Apology against
Harding. When completed; Lady Bacon sent it both to the Archbishop and the author himself,
Bishop Jewel ; accompanied in the latter instance with a Greek epistle, which the Bishop also
acknowledged in Greek. After a careful perusal of this learned Lady's translation, it was
returned to her by Parker and Jewel, without a single correction or emendation ; though in
reality a prior translation had appeared, printed by Reiner Wolf, in which the Archbishop
himself is said to have had a considerable hand. We have, in our first volume, prepared the
reader for these efforts and examples of learning, in the daughters of Sir Anthony Cook ; but
as this version was not actually made public before the year 1564, we may have more to say of
it hereafter.
§ This year also a new edition was put forth of Coverdale's Bible. — See Strype's Annals, i. 424.
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 279
shall continue to be subject to the imputation of novelty. We were careful in
our first volume to shew, that the term Restoration would have been a better
term to express what the seceders from Popery in the sixteenth century were
seeking to accomplish, than the term Reformation. They were endeavouring
not to amend a bad system, but only to tread back their steps to a more pure
and primitive state of the true Catholic Church ; to cast aside all questionable
authorities, and in every instance to be governed, first by the Scriptures, where-
ever the Scriptures had spoken decisively, and secondly, by the wisdom and
practice of the earliest ages of Christianity. This was certainly the object of
the most learned and zealous opponents of the corruptions of the Church of
Rome; and though the Protestants, or Reformers (or perhaps more correctly
Anti-Papists), fell into parties, as the Papists fairly enough objected, and could
not therefore all be right, yet it well deserved the care and pains of a man like
Jewel, to pen such an apology for his own church, after the manner and example
of the ancient apologists of Christianity itself, as Quadratus, Melito, Justin
Martyr, Tertullian, and others, and to repel, in his own behalf, as well as in that
of all his coadjutors, the charges of novelty, heterodoxy, schism, ignorance, and
mischief;* and by explaining the true grounds on which the friends of the
English Church had proceeded, in copious references to Scripture and the
earliest Fathers, to submit matters as fairly as could be to the judgment of the
world at large,f and at any hazard of convincing or not convincing others, to
justify their own doings. This was the sole design and intent of the Apology
of Jewel. It is still before the public, nor have the answers that were made to
it been kept out of sight. Every opportunity of refuting it was afforded to
the learned of Europe, by distributing copies in all parts ; France, Flanders,
Germany, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Scotland, Denmark, and Sweden, not
excepting Rome and Naples, to which latter places indeed it seems to have been
particularly sent. It is to be regarded as no small proof of its worth and
importance, that it fell under the notice of the Council of Trent, and underwent
there a pretty strict examination. Two Popish Bishops undertook to answer it,
* See, for an account of all these several charges, Bishop Jewel's own preface to his Defence
of the Apology, 1569 ; and Strype's Annals, i. 424.
t " Ad Apologiam ablego," says the famous scholar, Walter Haddon, in his Epistle to Osorius,
" quern ecclesia nostra tanquam communem et certain nostrae religionis obsidern palam in oculis
orbis Christiani collocavit." — "I refer you to the Apology, which our Church has placed openly
before the eyes of the whole Christian world, as the common and certain pledge of our religion."
280 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGH LEY. [1562.
as well as many English Papists, but it stood its ground against all attacks, and
may be said to do so to this day. Though the main object of the book was to
defend the principles and practice of the Anglican Church, yet great care was
taken to shew, that in many particulars it was in perfect agreement with other
Reformed Churches, German, Helvetian, French, and Scotch. There was
sufficient proof given of this, by the letter which that eminent Reformer, Peter
Martyr, wrote to Jewel but a few months before his death, and in which he
undertook, in addition to his own commendations, to answer by name for
Bullinger, his sons and sons-in-law, with Gualter and Wolph then residing
with him at Zurich.
This letter was written in August, and on the 12th of November following, that
learned Professor and Divine, Peter Martyr, died — an event he seems to have
apprehended to be nigh at hand, from some passages of his letter : indeed, his
infirmities appear to have been great, distressing, and painful — " quotidie onus
aetatis ingravescit. Jam a sesquianno sum prorsus edentulus, nee ventriculus
officium fecit, ut me appetitu ad comedendum excitet ; laboro prseterea capitis
distillationibus ; ad quse mala tibiarum non leves accesserunt dolores, propter
duo ulcera, quibus interdum graviter discrucior." This learned and good man was
better known in England during the preceding reigns, especially under Edward
VI., when he filled, as we have shewn in our first volume, the Professor of Divi-
nity's chair at Oxford, being exposed there to many rude and unfair attacks on the
part of the Papists. He was doomed to bear his share of the malevolent and very
unjust censures of Popish bigots ; and notwithstanding his great learning, godly
life, and inoffensive manners, was compelled to hear himself denounced as " a
dotard, a subverted, impudent, and notorious master of errors." " Senex delirus,
subversus, impudens, errorum magister insignis," are the foul terms of one of his
great opponents, Tresham. Having lived much at Lambeth with Cranmer, the
friendly and just praises of the latter are abundantly sufficient to outweigh the
calumnious, malevolent, and unjust imputations of his enemies. He was an Italian
by birth; his proper family name being Vcrmigli ; his parents were rich, and of
some figure in the world ; but having imbibed the doctrines of the Reformists,
and even ventured to preach and inculcate them among his associates at Naples,
he was compelled to leave that place, and, after many removals, to take up his
abode in England, 1547. We have had occasion to speak of him at that period
of our history, and need not therefore say more, than that living in most trying
and hazardous times, he appears to have conducted himself, in all instances,
1562.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 281
with singular prudence, moderation, and good sense. We have spoken of
Cranmer's praises of him ; but the learned Dupin, the author of the " Biblio-
theque universelle des auteurs ecclesiastiques," has not scrupled to speak of him
also in terms of the highest commendation, though compelled to regard him as
a heretic ; or, to use an expression common in those days, &pretcndu-reformateur.
We have noticed in our first volume the barbarous exhumation of the dead body
of his wife at Oxford ; it deserves therefore to be mentioned, to the praise of
Archbishop Parker, Bishop Grindal, and others, that in the very year before
Peter Martyr himself died, care was taken to search for and recover the remains
of this worthy but unfortunate woman, which had been ignominiously thrown
into a dunghill, and to cause them to be decently and honourably re-interred ;*
not without very public tokens of respect and esteem, many copies of Latin and
Greek verses, composed by the learned members of Christ Church, being on the
day appointed for the ceremony, attached to the doors of the Cathedral, in praise
of her virtues ; a speech also was made upon the occasion ; and on the Sunday
following, a pious and learned sermon delivered from the pulpit by one of that
society. It is remarkable that this considerate and wise act should have afforded
the commissioners (for all that took place was under the Queen's ecclesiastical
commission) an opportunity of burying also, at the same time, the bones of
St. Frideswide, which, as precious relics, had, in past times, been applied to
superstitious purposes, being on certain days exposed on the altar to receive
the devotions of the people. We cannot conclude without adding this re-
markable fact, that Marshall, the very Dean of Christ Christ, who had caused
the dead body of Martyr's wife to be dug up and cast into the dunghill, retracted
in the course of the year 1563, and in the presence of the Bishop of London,
freely and willingly subscribed the articles of 1 562. — See Strypes Annals, ii.
ch. 36. This was not the first time he had forsworn the Romish religion, having
retracted under Edward, though, in his public acts, so great a bigot under Mary.
* Life of Archbishop Parker, i. 199.
VOL. II. 2 O
CHAP. V.
1563.
The Fifth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, began November 17, 1562.
Parliamentary proceedings — The Speaker Williams' address to the Queen — Subsidy, and
proceedings relative to the succession — Reflections on the Queen's marriage and succession —
Nowell's catechism — Second Book of Homilies — Disputes in convocation — Queen Elizabeth
studies the Fathers — Conspiracy of the Poles — Surrender of Newhaven— Conclusion of
the Council of Trent — Jewel's answer to Scipio — Osorius's letter to the Queen, and
Haddon's answer— Haddon employed by Cecil — His death — Mary Queen of Scots writes
to the council of Trent — Elizabeth's message to the Queen of Scots.
ON the 12th of January 1562-3,* the Queen's second Parliament began to sit at
Westminster, being opened in great form by her Majesty in person, who was attended
thither by all her Lords spiritual and temporal. The new Bishops, twenty-two in
number, riding in their robes of scarlet, lined, and hoods down their backs of
Meniver.-f The Chief Secretary, Sir William Cecil, appears to have occupied a dis-
tinguished place in the procession, between the Knights, Counsellors (whereof his
father-in-law, Sir Anthony Cook, was one), and the Peers, preceded by William
Howard, bearing the Queen's cloak and hat. Her Majesty's own appearance is
so minutely described, as to be worth transcribing. After the Duke of Norfolk,
with his Marshal's gold rod, the Lord Treasurer with the cap of estate, and the
Earl of Worcester with the sword, came the Queen's Majesty on horseback : a
little behind, the Lord Chamberlain and Vice-Chamberlain. Her Grace appa-
relled in her mantle, opened before, furred with ermines, and her kertle of
crimson velvet, close before and close sleeves ; but the hands turned up with,
ermines, and a hood hanging low round about her neck of ermines ; over all, a
* Ann. 5th Elizabeth, 1562-3.
t Strype, and D'Ewes" journal, where the whole form of the procession is to be seen,
transcribed from memorials written at the time.
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 283
rich collar set with stones and other jewels, and on her head a rich cowl : and
the next after her the Lord Robert Dudley, Master of the Horse, leading the
spare horse ; and after all, other ladies, two and two, in their ordinary apparel.
By the side of the Queen went her footmen, and along on either side the pensioners
with their axes ; then the Captain of the Guard, Sir William St. Loe, and after
him the guard. Her Majesty's reception and attendance at the Abbey, to which
she first resorted, to hear a sermon preached by Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's,
before her entrance into the Parliament House, were accompanied also with
ceremonies of extraordinary magnificence and solemnity, as may be seen at large
in D'Ewes' Journal ; but we must pass on to other things.
From the speech of the Lord Keeper, too long to be inserted here, much may
be collected of the precise state of the kingdom at this time; whether regarding
religion, or the policy of the realm. The complaints he observed were many, of the
insufficiency or incompetency of ministers, the want of order and regularity
in the discharge of their duties, with no small contempt, in many instances, of
the wholesome discipline of the Church. These things he earnestly recom-
mended to the care and attention of the spiritual Lords. He urged upon the
temporal Lords a careful revision, and, if possible, a retrenchment of the existing
laws, as being, in some instances, too many, thereby occasioning confusion,
delay, and unnecessary expense, and of all good and necessary laws, to enforce,
to the utmost of their means, the due execution. To the Commons he applied,
in the Queen's name, for a subsidy, " not to cover any extravagant debts or
expenses, but entirely in defence of the state." Some of his expressions upon
this head do the Queen much honour, especially as they appear to be founded on
truth. " And where afore this time Princes commonly have had some vein or
delight to spend treasure upon, for their pleasure, which the Queen hath none,
but only for the commonwealth and surety thereof, so that we may most justly
and fortunately say, to her great praise, that the relieving of the realms neces-
sities is our Princes whole delight ; and notwithstanding all the disbursements
of her late charges, yet she was (as I right well know) very hardly brought to,
and persuaded to call this Parliament, in which she should be driven to require
any aid, or by any means to charge her subjects, if by any other means it might
have been holpen ; and so her Majesty herself commanded to be declared.
As I for my part, and so do others, very well know ; for the Commons little
think or consider what a trouble want is to her, whereby she is forced to ask of
them (which surely is against her nature) ; but that she is thereunto forced
284 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. l'«»
for the surety of this reata :" he concludes »,th recou—g to the. the
Keeper, of the Queen
::±r£ ±;, ;: « r±g r
accession to this time. The Speaker observes to her Majesty ,-
"When God planted your Highness m ths place, you i fon, ,t n
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 285
hitherto only been done of your own charge, as the last day by the Lord
Keeper was declared. And for the last part, and principal point of all others,
your Highness has brought and restored again God's doctrine into this realm."
For the remainder of this speech, we cannot do better than follow Strype, the
very author who has insinuated, that probably Cecil had a great hand in it.
" He took notice of the want of schools ; that, at least, an hundred were wanting
in England, which before this time had been ; [being destroyed, I suppose he
meant, by the dissolution of monasteries, and religious houses, fraternities, and
colleges.] He would have had England continually flourishing, with ten thou-
sand scholars, which the schools in this nation formerly brought up. That from
the want of these, and good schoolmasters, sprang up ignorance : and covetousness
got the livings by impropriations, which was a decay, he said, of learning : and
by it the tree of knowledge grew downward, not upward ; which grew greatly
to the dishonour, both of God and the commonwealth. He mentioned likewise,
the decay of the universities ; and how that great market-towns were without
schools or preachers : and that the poor vicar had but 20/. [or some such allow-
ance], and the rest, being no small sum, was impropriated, and so thereby, no
preacher there; but the people, being trained up, and led in blindness for want
of instruction, became obstinate : and therefore advised that this should be seen
to, and impropriations redressed, notwithstanding the laws already made [which
favoured them].* He took notice also of a third monster, called Error, [as
Ignorance and Necessity were the two others that troubled the kingdom.]
Under this monster, he brought the Pelagians, libertines, Papists, and such
other, leaving God's commandments, to follow their own traditions, affections,
and minds : that if the Papist was (and indeed he was) in error, that we should
seek the redress thereof; for that the poor and ignorant were abused.
* The Speaker's expressions upon this point are very strong, as reported by Collier, " The
Impropriations therefore, which are so fundamental to our misfortune, ought to be restored to the
Church, and the laws repealed which lie cross to the redressing this grievance." This passage
alone, if the speech were Cecil's (and at all events there can be no doubt of his having approved
it), ought to be sufficient to exonerate him from the charge of having encouraged the spoliations
that were going forward, and of having even partaken of them, without scruple. We have endea-
voured to shew elsewhere, that whatever he got in the scramble, was either purchased, or
obtained by grants for tried services, in cases, which if he had not taken, would assuredly only have
passed into other (and, most likely, much less deserving) hands. Our belief is, that he never
regarded such property, in private hands, as at all secure ; that he contemplated some restoration,
so much so, as to caution his own son against having more to do with it than he could help.
286 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563
"He moved her Majesty to build a strong fort for the surety of the realm, for
the repulsing of her enemies, and to be set upon firm and steadfast ground ;
which fort to have two gates, the one commonly open, the other a postern, and
two Watchmen at either of them ; one Governor, one Lieutenant : and then no
good thing would there be wanting. The fort he meant was, the FEAR of GOD ;
the Governor, God himself; her Majesty the Lieutenant; the stones of it the
hearts of her faithful people ; the two Watchmen at the open gate to be know-
ledge and virtue ; the other two at the postern to be mercy and truth ; all being
spiritual ministers. That this fort was invincible, if every man would fear God :
for all Governors reign and govern by the two Watchmen, Knowledge and
Truth : and that if she, being the Lieutenant, saw Justice, with Prudence her
sister, executed, she would then rightly use the office of a Lieutenant : and for
such as departed out of this fort, let them be let out at the postern by the two
Watchmen, Mercy and Truth : and then she would be well at home and abroad."
" In this ingenious speech," says Strype, " I strongly suspect Cecil had a great
hand." If this were so, it certainly does him honour. Many parts perhaps of it
are too fanciful, and too metaphorical to suit the present taste, but it contains
undoubtedly many wholesome and important truths ; truths, which it required
no small courage so publicly to insist upon, but which notoriously demanded
the royal attention. On the prorogation of the Parliament from April to
October, the Speaker again addressed her Majesty, in a style of language much
resembling that of his former speech, soliciting her royal assent to the bills
they had passed, and begging her to accept from her faithful subjects a supply
of one subsidy and two fifteenths, to defray the charges incurred in France, and
in the repair of her Northern fortresses.* The measure of these grants we may
conclude to have been prescribed by the Secretary, according to the following
entry in the Journals of the House, January the 20th.
* Camclen says, this aid was granted for religion reformed, peace restored, England with
Scotland freed from the foreign enemy, money refined, the navy renewed, warlike munition by
sea and land provided, and for the laudable enterprise in France for the securing of England and
the recovering of Calais. The Clergy gave one subsidy. As Camden in this place explains the
subsidy and jiftccnth, it may not be amiss to add what he says of them. A fifteenth he states to
be a certain taxation upon every city, borough, and town, not upon every particular man, but in
general in respect of the fifteenth part of the wealth of the places. A subsidy is a tax levied by
the poll upon every man, according to the valuation of their goods and lands ; neither of them
being ever imposed but by consent of the Estates in Parliament.
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 287
" An excellent declaration was this day made by Mr. Secretary Cecill, of the
great charges defrayed by the Queen's Majesty, and of the causes of the wars
of France, for not keeping the edict there made by the Parliament, and also
.touching the charges at Barwicke and Newhaven, the provision of armour, and
the navy, the cavillation of the French for Callice, concluding to consider for
the aid."
It was in this Parliament, and only about eight days after the above statement
had been made to the House by the Secretary, that her Majesty received the
petition of the Commons, touching the limitation of the succession ; in which
much was pressed upon her attention, relating to the troubles that might ensue
from a disputed succession, in case her Majesty should be taken from them
before she should have issue, of which her late illness, as it was observed, had
been sufficient to give them but too lively apprehensions. They humbly
besought her to weigh these things in her mind, and either to take to herself
some honourable husband,* or else provide some most gracious remedy against
the dangers incident to an unsettled succession, her Majesty being the last
expressly named in the will of Henry VIII., and in the body of the act relating
thereto ; and the nation in much uncertainty as to any further limitations, which
left it in " some great dangerous doubt, to the great grief, peril, and unquietness
of her faithful Commons." No sufficient or immediate answer being returned
to this petition, on the 12th of February, "the House desired the Privy Council
to require the Queen's Majesty, to have in remembrance their petition, looking
for her most gracious answer." A sort of answer (but certainly no very gracious
one) was accordingly sent, as may appear from the following entry in the
Journal : " Mr. Comptroller and Mr. Secretary (Cecil) declared from the
Queen's Highness, that she doubted not but the grave heads of this House did
right well consider, that she forgot not the suit of this House for the succession,
the matter being so weighty ; nor could forget it : but she willed the young
heads to take example by the antients." No regular answer to the original
petition, however, was ever returned to the House, but on the last day of the
sittings, the Queen being present in the Upper House, the Lord Keeper was
commanded to say, that, " for the great weight of the matter, her Majesty
minded to take further advice." — D' Ewes, 91.
* " In Parliament petition made both by the Lords and Commons, that her Majesty would
marry." — Lord Burghley's Diary, March.
288 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURHGLEY. [1563.
It was certainly a question of no small embarrassment to Elizabeth, though
she was, as the petition of the Commons stated, the last person expressly named
in the settlement upon Henry's will, yet the Suffolk line had a claim under the
statute, empowering Henry to name his successors ; and Mary of Scots' claim
had as yet no parliamentary sanction whatsoever ; on the contrary, in the very
petition of which we are speaking, she seems to be spoken of as a stranger to
the throne. " We have been admonished," say the petitioners, " of the great
malice of your foreign enemies, which, even in your lifetime, have sought to
transfer the dignity and right of your crown to a STRANGER ;" and in another
passage, great apprehensions seem to be expressed of the advancement of Mary's
claim and title, by a party at home. "We fear a faction of heretics in your
realm, contentious and malicious Papists, lest they, most unnaturally against
their country, most madly against their own safety, and most treacherously
against your Highness, not only hope for the day of your death, but also lay in
wait to advance some title under which they may revive their late unspeakable
cruelty, to the destruction of goods, possessions, and bodies, and thraldom of
the souls and consciences of your faithful and Christian subjects." There is a
curious speech of Sir Ralph Sadler's to be seen in Clifford's edition of his
letters, &c. upon this subject. " He regards Mary as a stranger, according to
the laws of England ; he shews how ill the Scots behaved, and how grossly they
dissembled, in King Henry VIII. 's time, in regard to the betrothment of Mary
and Edward ; he adduces instances to shew how unwilling the Scots were to
receive a King from England ; and argues from thence, how incongruous it
would be for England to declare the Scots Queen heir to the throne." — 'Sadler's
Letters, &;c. vol. ii. 556, £c. Sir Ralph speaks entirely of his own personal
knowledge of the disposition of the Scots, and is quite against the regiment of
any strange Prince in England. This speech was delivered in parliament in
the year 1563. Had the Queen chosen at once to cut off or supersede Mary's
claim and pretensions, the opportunity offered her was very striking;* had she
at all chosen, for instance, to bring forward the Suffolk line, or name any other
successor ; the alternative of marrying any "honourable husband" was equally
perplexing. She was a woman of exactly that temper and spirit, that might
* There was certainly a large party disposed to consider Mary as naturally excluded, being an
alien born, though Parliament might over-rule any such disqualification, and, in fact, in the case
of her own son it was over-ruled ; but we cannot deny that Sir William Cecil, as well as many
others, considered her as a foreigner by birth: we have however said more of this elsewhere.
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 289
make her wish to reign alone ; or if she .should marry, there could be no cer-
tainty of having issue ; she was fond of admiration to excess, and appears
decidedly to have had favourites, whom she did not choose to elevate to the
throne. Mary Queen of Scots was already a dangerous pretender, and it was
impossible to calculate or foresee what might or might not be the effects of
giving her a parliamentary reversionary title. The parliament itself, from the
terms of the petition, seems scarcely to have wished it. We cannot at present
quite unravel the mystery of the " old" and " young heads," alluded to by her
Majesty ; but we are prepared entirely to agree with the answer sent, namely,
that it was a very weighty matter, requiring further advice. That many of her
most faithful subjects and wisest Counsellors might wish her married, can
scarcely be doubted, considering the claims of Scotland alone, backed by France.
Of CtciVs opinion,* however undecided it may have appeared at times, we
have some particular intimation in the following passage of a letter addressed
to Sir Thomas Smith, then the Queen's Ambassador in France. " The heads of
both Houses are fully occupied with the provision of surety to the realm, if God
should to our plague call the Queen without leaving of children: the matter is
so deep that I cannot reach unto it, and I pray God to send it a good issue."
He afterwards wrote to the same, that he could not see that any effect would
come of the earnest suits made of the three estates to the Queen's Majesty, either
for marriage or state of succession. Of Sir Thomas Smith's opinion we shall
have more to say hereafter. Ascham's opinion, as given at this very time, 1562,
to Sturmius, in a letter to that eminent scholar, has been much noticed, as the
opinion of a man who had continual opportunities of observing her Majesty's
character and the disposition of her mind. Of the two wives of Theseus,
Hippolyte and Phaedra, he judged her more to resemble the former than the
latter ; that is, to be more of an Amazon or warrior (for Hippolyte was Queen
of the Amazons), than of an amorous complexion, which was the character of
Phgedra.f Ascham added, what seems to have been entirely true, as to the
mysterious conduct of Elizabeth, " for her disposition towards wedding," he
assures Sturmius, that " neither he, nor none else, could know any thing certain,
nor tell what to say." This is exactly consonant to the account given by Jewel
to Peter Martyr : " Regina nostra, magno nostro cum dolore, innupta manet :
* The Secretary, in one of his letters at this time, complains that he was " so fully occupied to
expedite matters in this present Parliament, that he had almost no leisure to attend to other
things." t Strype's Annals, i. 469.
VOL. II. 2 P
290 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
neque adhuc quid velit sciri potest." In this letter of Jewel, the danger accruing
from Elizabeth's not marrying is enlarged upon ; he notices Darnleys affinity
to the crown, the possibility of his marrying Mary of Scots, which would
apparently delight the Catholics ; he speaks of the suspected intercourse between
Lord Hertford and Lady Catherine Grey, as not being married to each other,
which marriage, if it could be proved, would bring their son also into the line
of inheritance under Henry's will, and concludes, "O nos miseros, qui non
possumus scire, sub quo Domino victuri simus ! Deus nobis Elizabethan!, dm,
spero vivam et incolumen conservabit, id nobis erit satis :"-but we must have
done with this subject. This second Parliament, on the 10th of April, 1563,
was prorogued to the 5th of October, 1564, and by subsequent prorogations, had
its sittings suspended till the eighth year of the Queen's reign, 1 566, never having
been formally dissolved in the intermediate time.*
• It was in this Parliament that the Members of the House of Commons were first required,
by statute, to take the Oath of Supremacy, enjoined in the first year of the Queen's reign : certain
provisions had been now annexed to it, making the refusal to take the oath the second time treaso
It was only to be demanded of those who were about to enter into holy orders, or take upon them
any eminent place or office. The refusal had been made treason before, but only in the third
instance; the penalty therefore was apparently advanced one degree at least in severity ; objections
were raised in both Houses, but over-ruled. Of its necessity, Strype gives the following account :
" This was the import and sum of this memorable act, which was necessary for me to set down,
in order to the understanding the history of the state of religion in this land at this time; t
Romish party, and the favourers of the See of Rome, being so dangerously busy, that the wiido
of the nation found it needful to constitute such a severe law, and such extreme penalties against
them ; and to lay all such persons aside from enjoying any public place or office in Church or
state, that would not own the Queen's supremacy in her own dominions;" but the severity o
law was felt and perceived in the highest quarters; so much so, that Parker, the Archbishop,
wrote to his suffragans to be very careful how they tendered the oath a second time, and des.rmg
that before they did so, he might be informed of the case. He wished them to keep this tc
themselves, that no undue encouragement might be given by it. He confesses that he had no
authority to use the Queen's name in what he was doing, but he wrote at the same time i
to intimate that her Majesty approved the expedient, and was willing the rigour of the law might
be diverted, and concludes, by referring the matter to the Secretary's own judgment, who, it is
added, " approved his method."— Collier, and Life of Archbishup Parker.
By this temper, Collier adds, none of the Popish Bishops or Clergy had the oath of supremacy
offered them, excepting Boner, ii. 485. Boner, according to his custom, disputed the authority of
the Bishop of Winchester, who tendered the oath, and gave all the trouble he could ; so that, as
Strype says, upon the issue of matters, " all this scandal, trouble, and disturbance, had this good
Bishop (Home) in venturing to be so hard as to meddle with such a man as Boner was."
1563.] MEMOXRS OF LORD BURGHLEY Ml
doctrine to
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andTaUr11"' ^ ""'
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coramodities
to have been guided in us
, in
2g2 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
eated, than the present ; the fifth Article on the Holy Ghost was inserted, and
the thirty-eighth enlarged, with a view to obviate mistakes concerning the
extent of the power and pre-eminence, or, in fact, supremacy of the Sovereign,
in ecclesiastical affairs ; plainly shewing the intent to be, merely to secure to
the civil magistrate the chief government of all persons and estates, ecclesias-
tical and civil, in all causes within his dominions, to the utter exclusion of all
foreign jurisdiction ; disclaiming all pretence of executing in his own person,
the strictly ecclesiastical duties of preaching, ministering the Sacraments, &c.
The ambiguous title of Head of the Church,* which had been misrepresented or
misunderstood, during the reigns of Henry and Edward, was not resumed by
Elizabeth, on her first coming to the crown ; but in not resuming it, care was to
be taken to guard the supremacy from the encroachments of such as were
manifestly disposed to assume a church authority over the persons of princes, if
not altogether as absolute as that of the Church of Rome, yet decidedly ap-
proaching to a deposing power. " Quis tandem Reges, et Principes," who can
exempt Kings and Princes, saith Beza, from this not human, but divine domi-
nation; "non humana, sed divina dominatione," speaking of the Presbytery.
Considering what was passing in Scotland, among the disciples of Calvin and
Bezafi the supremacy of the chief magistrate seemed to require certainly a
double guard at this time, to say nothing of the Anabaptists, who condemned all
magistracy. Later, indeed, in the Queen's reign, we shall find instances of a
disdain of magisterial authority, by some who stood up for the Discipline, as it
was called, exceedingly contrary to the laws established.
* In the reign of Charles I., Archbishop Laud, and the other Bishops, were charged with the
forgery of so much of the twentieth Article, as assigns to the Church a power to decree rites
and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith. As the decision of the question depended
on the existing copies of the original Articles, we must refer the reader to Heylin, Strype, Collier,
&c., for their judgment upon the case : the Life of Lord Leicester [1727] may also be consulted,
for it became at last a question, not so much whether the Bishops had made the addition, as whe-
ther the Puritans, with Leicester at their head, had not been guilty of subtraction, by a spurious
edition of the Articles, after they had passed the Convocation.
t To shew that the Secretary bore no ill-will to these eminent Reformers (though in many
respects their sentiments were not congenial to his own), it appears that after the conferences at
Poissy, Beza being in some distress, Cecil invited him to England, and this very year, 1563,
Whittingham, who had married Calvin's sister, was made Dean of Durham, principally, we may
conclude, through the interest of Leicester and his brother, Lord Warwick, though he had previ-
ously been in some disgrace with Elizabeth, for having written a Preface to Christopher Good-
man's famous Tracts on Obedience to Civil Powers. — See McCric's Life of Knox, vol. i. note A A.
1563-1 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 293
Under this first head of Doctrine, besides the Articles, and Jewel's Apology,
which was upon a fresh revisal to be annexed to them, we are particularly
called upon to notice the celebrated Catechism of Dr. No-well, Dean of St. Paul's,
because it is generally admitted to have been undertaken on the express advice
of the Secretary; and appears to have been submitted to him, both before and
after the sanction it received from the Members of Convocation. The Dean is
allowed to have made so much use of the Catechism set forth towards the latter
end of King's Edward's reign, as to render it probable that he was the author of
both ; but in his Latin Catechism, he tells us himself, that he had two objects in
view ; namely, by a careful attention to the Latinity, as well as to the Doctrine,
to assist the youth of the kingdom in acquiring a just taste for pure classical
language, from books of Christian piety, as well as from the profane, fictitious,
and sometimes impious and impure fables of the poets. The first edition was
dedicated to Sir William Cecil, as the person, who, by the Dean's own account,
had set him on work. It was, as soon as finished, submitted to the Lower House
of Convocation, and by the hands of the Dean himself (the Prolocutor), attended
by Sampson and Day, presented to the Upper House, as unanimously approved
and assented to. It was then returned into the hands of the Secretary,* who
* Strype has given us the substance of Nowell's address .to the Secretary, upon the return of
his Catechism to him, after it had undergone the inspection of the Members of Convocation.
" He certified him," says Strype, « that whereas the copy of the Catechism, which he caused to be
written out for his Honour, came to the hands of the Bishops and Clergy, assembled in the Convo-
cation, and by reason that certain places were by their judgments altered, and that it was interlined,
and somewhere blotted, he had caused it to be copied out again, and had sent it him now, not in
his own name, as afore, but in the name of the Clergy of the Convocation, as their book ; seeing it
was by them approved and allowed : and that he would have sent it sooner, but that he thought
his Honour to be occupied with certain most weighty public affairs, by occasion, rising and increas-
ing in the mean time, that he could have no leisure to view that or any other book ; which great
public businesses, seeing they did not so speedily, as he trusted, draw towards an end, but continued
and augmented still, he thought it meet, that the copy of the book, at the beginning appointed
and dedicated to his Honour, should remain with the same; that when opportunity should serve,
he might at leisure have it, and judge whether it were not unworthy, by his help, to be made public'
by the Queen's Majesty's authority : for how expedient it were, that some treatise of religion should
be set forth publicly in the name of our country, his Honour did well understand ; seeing the opi-
nion beyond the seas was, that nothing touching religion was, with any authority or consent of
any number of the learned here in our country, taught and set forth : but that a few private per-
sons taught and wrote their opinions, without the approbation of any authority at all.
" That for his part, he had taken pains as well about the matter of the book, that it might be
consonant to the true doctrine of the Scriptures, as also, that the style might agree with the purity
294 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
kept it by him above a year, after which he sent it again to Nowell, with some
learned man's notes upon it. We kcow not why, after this, it should have been
kept back by the learned author for so much as eight years, a less term being
surely sufficient for mere transcription ; yet so it would appear from Strype's
account of it, who tells us, that " remaining with him" (the author) " till 1570,
it was then again called for by both the Archbishops, in order to the publishing
of it, and with Cecil's consent (to whom it was dedicated before), being dedi-
cated now by the author to the two Archbishops and the Bishop of London by
name, and to all die rest of the Bishops, it was printed; and printed again
1572, and again 1578, with this title, " Christianas pietatis prima institutio, ad
usum Scholarum, Latine Scripta." It was translated also by the care of the
author into English and Greek. We must, however, add, that some mistakes
have been committed in the account above ; which are corrected in the Intro-
duction to Dr. Burrows' Summary of Christian Faith and Practice, 1822. It
was, it seems, the abridged Catechism, which in 1572 was dedicated to the two
Archbishops, not the larger or original Catechism ; nor does it appear to have
been presented to the Upper House of Convocation before the year 1570. — See
p: Ixviii. Introd.
We may see, from the above short account of this very eminent and standard
work (for it is allowed as much credit as ever amongst Theologians),* what object
the Secretary was pursuing ; and how sedulously, though deprived of the help of
his old friends and acquaintance, the Martyrs of the English Protestant Church,")'
he was bent upon treading in their steps, and reviving the memory of Cranmer,
Ridley, Hooper, &c. : to their immortal honour, King Edward's Catechism, first
published by the King's authority, both in English and Latin, in the year 1553,
was more than revived ; by the care of Nowell, under the Secretary's direction, it
was made the basis of a more extended manual for the instruction of youth ; in
Jewel's Apology, the public had ample information given them of the grounds^
of the Latin tongue ; and that as the book had not misliked their judgments, whom he did most
allow, and also reverence ; so, if it might likewise be approved to him, to whose patrociny in his
purpose he appointed it, when hefint began it, he should think his pains most happily bestowed."
* The late learned and worthy Bishop Randolph, to whom the author had the honour of being
a pupil, republished it in the second volume of his Enchiridion Theologicum, 1792.
t See our first volume.
t " Edidimus nuper apologiam de mutata religione, et Discessione ab Ecclesia Romana,"
is Jewel's own account of his work in a letter to Peter Martyr. Jewel, in this letter, complains
greatly of the carelessness of the English Printers.
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 295
on which the Church of England had separated from the Church of Rome, and
which, therefore, may be said to have a retrospective design ; in Nowell's Cate-
chism, the kingdom was supplied with a complete view of the doctrines of the
Church, when, after the interruption of Mary's reign, it had been restored and
established under Elizabeth.
It is absurd to consider Sir William Cecil as at this time a novus homo, or states-
man of Elizabeth's days only ; he was, in fact, the surviving representative of the
statesmen and theologians of former days, and of the first and original Reformers.
He was acting, with the aid of his own nominee, the Primate, Archbishop Parker,
as a second Cranmer, equally bent upon the full establishment of a Protestant
Church in this realm, and equally cautious to have every thing put upon its
proper footing. Had not great care been manifested, to go back to the times of
Edward, the measures and proceedings of that very short but important reign
might have been lost in obscurity, or greatly depreciated ; but it was highly
honourable, and bespoke a proper feeling in the Secretary of Elizabeth, to act as
he had done while Secretary to her amiable brother. We discover no indelicate
abuse or vilifying of Mary ; no rude denunciations of her infatuated conduct ;
but a path is chalked out for reverting at once to the days of Edward.
The cause of the Reformation is revived, in the face of all Europe, with a bold-
ness destitute of all malice, but determined to proceed. Cecil must have known
what he was about, and the extreme hazards to which he was exposing himself;
the Queen being still surrounded with Catholics, and Protestants ill-inclined to
adopt all his measures ; but his own course was steady and unshaken : he was
already a Protestant of the old school, and determined to adhere to it. Jewel's
Apology and Nowell's Catechism may afford us a good insight into his prin-
ciples, though neither of them were quite contented to stop, where the Reforma-
tion had stopped, under Edward.
Besides the Articles, the Apology, and Catechism, we feel that we ought,
under the first head of doctrine, to mention the second book of Homilies, which
in this year was finished and completed, though not immediately brought into
use. We may refer to Strype and Collier* for its titles and contents, as it would
be beyond our purpose to go at all largely into the subject, having in our first
volume explained the nature of these public sermons, prepared for the use of the
ministry and edification of the people, as indispensably necessary at this time of
* See also Burrows' Summary of Christian Faith and Practice, Introduction, p. xliii.
2961 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1663.
change and reformation. Bishop Cox wrote a Preface to this second book of
Homilies, which may be seen in Strype. The Archbishop appears to have been
very impatient to get them out; and as was constantly the case in all such
emergencies, to have applied to the Secretary to help him ; in consequence
of which two editions, and, perhaps more, were printed, 1563, when the Arch-
bishop was about to hold a visitation, during which visitation proposing to
revive the ancient hospitality of an Archbishop of Canterbury, he with some
humour reminded the Secretary of the spoliation of his see, as applicable to such
purposes, requesting that he would procure for him, from some of his friends in
Kent, two bucks, not having, like his predecessors, any parks or command
of venison. He tells the Secretary, that he applies to him rather than to
the Queen, though she had possession of his great park at Broyle, near Lewes,
lest he should be asking for something now become too good for the Bishops and
Clergy to eat. " Marry, because I doubt in these days whether Bishops or
Ministers may be thought worthy to eat venison, I will hold me to my beef, and
make merry therewith, and pray for all my benefactors." The Archbishop was
a most generous-hearted man, and truly and sincerely hospitable. The
expenses of this very visitation he paid out of his own purse, discharging the
clergy of their procurations.
In the Christian Remembrancer, December, 1820, 1 find the letter above from
Parker to Cecil, printed as a letter never published before ; but it is certainly
to be found almost word for word in Strype's Life of Parker, i. 254. There is,
however, among those unpublished letters, one from Coverdale to Cecil, which I
have not seen before, asking him to procure the Queen to remit the first-fruits of
the benefice of St. Magnus, in London, which the Bishop, in consideration
of his age, had just bestowed upon him. It is of nearly the same date as
Parker's, viz. February G, 1 563, he speaks of himself as going upon his grave,
and not able to live over a year [he died May 20, 1565], concluding, " Hereto-
fore, I praise God for it, your Honour hath ever been my special help and pro-
tector in all my rightful suits : if now (that poor old Myles may be provided for)
it please your Honour to obtain this for me, I shall think this ' enough'' to be unto
me ' as good as a feast' Thus most humbly beseeching your Honour to take my
boldness in good part, I commit you and all yours to the most gracious protec-
tion of Almighty God."— (Myles Coverdale quondam Episc. Exon.) There are
some letters also from Grindal, Bishop of London, and one particularly in behalf
of Coverdale, December 20, 1563 : " If any comfortable way of living might be
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 297
made of it [the vacant see of Llandaff], I would wish it to Father Coverdale, now
lately recovered of the plague. Surely it is not well that he, ' qui ante nos
omnes fuit in Christi,' should be now in his age without stay of living. I may
not herein excuse us Bishops ; somewhat I may say for myself, for I have offered
him divers things which he thought not meet for him." [N. B. This letter,
therefore, must have been written before the preceding, the date of which, to be
more intelligible, should rather have been written perhaps 1563-4.]
This Bishop appears also to have had his eye upon some venison from Cecil.
" Your warrant in Hatfield Park, or Enfield Chase, might serve my turn very
well. — Edm. London."
There is also a letter of gratitude from Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, to Cecil,
thanking him for having stood forth to " preserve his honesty from malice,"
[probably in the case of Bourne. See Strype's Annals, i. ch. xxxv.]
He goes on : " Such is the barrenness of this country that it bringeth nothing
forth fit to remember you withal : and, therefore, I am bold to present you with
an old clock in the stead of a new year's gift, which I hope you will the rather
accept, because it was your old master's of happy memory, King Edward's ; and
afterwards your loving and learned brother's, Mr. Cheeke's ; and since his, who
thinketh himself in many respects most bounden unto you, whose prayer you shall
ever have, whose service you may ever use, as knovveth the Almighty. From my
house at Hartelbury, December 28, 1563. — Ed. Wigorn."
Then follows another letter, mistakenly said to be heretofore unpublished)
namely, Nowell's letter to Cecil, with his Catechism, to be found in Strype's
Annals, i. ch. xxxi., and which we shall soon have occasion to mention.
As to what passed relative to the subjects proposed under the second and
third heads of the paper of preparatory matters to be submitted to the Con-
vocation, namely, of things requiring reformation, rites and ceremonies,
ecclesiastical laws and discipline, we must refer, as in other instances, to the
authors who have entered largely into the history of those times, and, with
no small labour, recovered all that could be recovered or ascertained of the
proceedings of this Synod or Convocation, under the loss of many valuable
registers and other documents by fire. The Queen was petitioned to renew
the Commission of thirty-two persons, spoken of in our first volume, under
the reigns of Henry and Edward, and of the completion of whose often suspended
labours we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. Endeavours were made to
secure a uniformity of ministerial habits ; but upon this and other points of
VOL. ir. 2 Q,
298 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
discipline, there appear to have been considerable differences and no slight
controversy. Great endeavours were made to introduce many things different
from the establishment under Edward, to which the more sober part were
inclined to adhere, as the result of the joint care of Cranmer, Ridley, and other
martyrs of the last reign. These, therefore, loudly protested against any such
changes ; and it seems to have been submitted to the vote. " When they went
to the suffrage," says Collier, " they found the innovators a considerable
number; but, notwithstanding the struggle, the protesting party carried it;*
and thus the ceremonies and decorations continued in their former condition.
However, it is plain by the contest, that the Frankfort and Geneva precisians had
no small interest ; many of the English exiles were willing to reform away the
ornaments and solemnity of divine worship, and thought Calvin's platform
a much better regulation than that of the primitive church ; but God be thanked,
the majority of our Reformers had a different sense of these matters, and
had more learning and judgment, more steadiness and resolution, than to
be overruled with noise and novelty."
We have already frequently intimated, and especially in our first volume, how
much the questions in dispute between the Reformers at home and the returned
exiles, must have depended on the extent to which it was needful to carry the
Reformation ; or, in other words, what ought decidedly to be dismissed and laid
aside as manifestly and notoriously repugnant to Scripture and the practice
of the earliest ages, and what, being already established, might reasonably and
without offence be retained. Not the habits only, or certain points of discipline,
but episcopacy itself, is known to have been made a matter of dispute on the
above grounds from the very beginning of the Reformation. Those who were
for retaining it, therefore, as consistent with the primitive form and model
of church government, could not but regard the proposals to lay it aside as pro-
posals to introduce novelties. Collier's expression, therefore, in this sense,
cannot be considered as too strong, with regard to many things required by the
precisians to be changed. They were, in fact, innovations upon Edward's plan,
which had the consent of Cranmer, and other most eminent divines, foreign as
well as English. The charge of novelty, therefore, might apply to those only
who were not contented with the system of things under Edward, wishing
* By one vote only.— See Strype's Annals, i. 504, 505. The numbers, including proxies, being
fifty-eight and fifty-nine. Neal complains that the individual who gave the casting vote had not
been present at the debates.
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 299
to go much farther in their departure from the Church of Rome. Those who
protested against these changes were fully satisfied with as near a return to the
establishment under Edward as could be accordant with the times; but it
cannot be denied, that many of the exiles who are ranked by Collier among the
innovators, were persons of great learning and piety ; their names may be seen
in Strype. Nowell, the prolocutor and author of the Catechism, being at
the head ; their prudence and discretion in what they did may yet be very
questionable. Most of them, as Cox told them during the Frankfort disputes,
had before submitted to Edward's Reformation, and why therefore interfere with
those who were for its revival, to the introduction of a foreign system and depre-
ciation of that great work of our English martyrs ?
Under the fourth head, the exility of small benefices, and the means of
improving them, it was impossible for any real friends of the Church and of
Religion not to be struck with the evils arising out of the new system of impro-
priations. This species of property stands now so well secured, as such, by the
laws of the land, that nothing less than a revolution, the least to be wished, and
most to be guarded against, could wrest it from the hands in which it is now
vested ; but it was at that time a perversion of things extremely to be lamented ; it
threw every thing out of course with regard to the character of the Reformation,
and under a pretence of rescuing the Church out of bad hands, left it, in many
instances, so destitute of a respectable and sufficiently educated ministry, as
exceedingly to hamper the government both lay and ecclesiastical, and to give
to the ejected Papists many fair grounds for reviling Protestantism. If Strype
be right in supposing that the subject of this Memoir had a hand in Speaker
Williams's address to the Queen on the meeting of Parliament, it must redound
to his credit, that he, as well as the worthy Primate, Parker, was disposed to
look upon impropriations as the radix omnium malorum, as regarded benefices,
the service of the church, and the instruction of the people. The Archbishop
exerted all his power to redeem matters at this time, but in vain.* Universal
restitution was a measure not to be expected or hoped for ; and partial re-
stitution must, in many instances, have been unjust, unless entirely volun-
tary. Little more could be done than to prevent, as far as possible, by
restraining statutes, further spoliations, further waste, and further abuse of
church property ; to check all simoniacal contracts and engagements, and
secure to the working ministry the best stipends they could, with helps to
* See Strype's Annals, i. 513, 514. Collier, &c.
300 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
provide instruction for the people by public forms of prayer, catechisms,
homilies, &c. But, indeed, the prospects of any one inclined to enter into the
ministry at this time, were so bad, that it was well observed in a paper drawn up
by Ralph Lever, touching the canon laws, and designed to be laid before the
Queen, that every body was become more desirous of breeding their sons up to
be lawyers or physicians than ministers, and would do any thing with them
sooner than make them priests.
At this time, and owing probably to the disputes among the Clergy, concern-
ing doctrines and discipline and the practice of the primitive church, her
Majesty occupied herself deeply in the study of the Fathers, as appears from a
letter of Cecil to Cox, Bishop of Ely. Cox's answer is somewhat remarkable ;
observing to the Secretary, that " when all was done, the Scripture is that that
pearseth. Chrysostom and the Greek Fathers," said he, " Pelagianizant [i. e.
favour Pelagius], sometimes Bernard Monachizat [i. e. is for Monkery], and he
trusted her Grace meddled with them but succisivis horis, that is, at spare hours."
But, as Strype remarks, the Queen having sufficient learning to do so, had reason
enough to look into the ancient times of the Church, being so set upon by
Romanists, who bore out themselves so much with Fathers and antiquity.
About this time, a conspiracy was brought to light, or rather was forced upon
the notice and attention of Government, in which some of the family of Pole,
brothers indeed, as Strype thinks* to the Cardinal, were implicated, with the
encouragement and connivance of the French and Spanish Ambassadors ;f both,
as it appeared, under the influence of the House of Guise. We may see by
this, the danger in which the Queen stood, and the need she had of vigilant and
and resolute Ministers. J The treason of the Poles consisted in a design,
' They were his nephews.
t The Bishop of Aquila was the Spanish Minister at this time, great with the Poles, and busy
to restore the Catholic religion, so much so, as to induce the Queen to desire his recal, but he
died in England soon after. — See Camden.
t To shew how much hidden and concealed danger Elizabeth's Counsellors had to guard
against, we may cite the case of Sir Francis Englefield, who being at this time a Popish refugee,
had been called home, and neglecting to return, had had his lands and goods seized to the
Queen's use ; against which he expostulated largely with the Council, professing his loyalty and
pleading his conscience ; and being afterwards in Spain, he procured the King to move the Queen
in his favour. The Queen upon this directed her Ambassador there to represent, that though he
had broken the laws, and incurred the forfeiture of his lands and goods, hitherto nothing had
actually been taken out of the hands of his own agents, or servants, except a certain provision
which the Queen had assigned to his wife, Lady Englefield. Intimation also was given, that had
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 301
betrayed by one of their party, to come with a power into Wales, and to proclaim
the Scottish Queen ; who, upon attaining the English crown, was to marry
one of the brothers (Edmund), and create the other (Arthur) Duke of Cla-
rence ; to which title it was alleged he had a fair and just right. Camden
states that the Prince of Conde when he made peace, was led by the hope of
marrying the Queen of Scots. They pretended that their plan was only to do
so in case of the Queen's death, which they had been taught to expect would
happen in the month of March, by one of the soothsayers, or prophets, so com-
mon in those days, and against whom it had been just found necessary to pass
an act. The discovery of these practices, which it seemed not difficult to trace
to the Guises, afforded the Queen a reasonable plea for aiding the French
Princes of the blood, and Protestants, against the ambition of that extraordinary
family, as Cecil particularly wrote to Sir Thomas Smith :* but the expedition
had no very good effect with regard to England.
Newhaven or Havre de Grace, had been put into the hands of the English,
the Queen been disposed to give ear to all the reports of Sir Francis's disloyalty and mal-prac-
tices, she should rather have shewn some severity than such lenity and clemency as had been
used; and, in truth, such reports were found afterwards to be deserving of all credit; for in the
year 1574, a paper actually fell into the hands of Lord Burghley, wrote by Sir Francis himself,
communicating to the Duke of Feria, Philip's minister in England, and Elizabeth's great enemy,
a complete list of those of her subjects who, being adverse to her Religion and Government,
received pensions from the King of Spain, or were suing for them. — Annals, ch. xxxvi. vol. ii.
where more may be seen of the foreign practices against the Queen, as detected by a special
agent, dispatched into Italy for the purpose. Among the resolutions taken at Rome, in conse-
quence of a representation made to the Cardinals by Pius IV., one was, to proclaim a pardon to
any cook, brewer, baker, vintner, physician, grocer, chirurgeon, or of any other calling whatso-
ever, who should make away with the Queen; and an absolute remission of sins to the heirs of
that party's family, with a perpetual annuity, and to be of the Privy Council to whomsoever after-
wards should reign. Another article denounced excommunication and a perpetual curse on the
families and posterity of all those of the Mother Church that should not promote or assist, by
means of money or otherwise, Mary Queen of Scotland's pretence to the crown of England.
* " By the Council's letters, ye shall understand, how that a matter of the Poles, practised by
the French Ambassador, and the Spanish, hath been of late discovered ; which although it be of
no great moment to be feared, yet thereby it is made apparent how truly the Queen's Majesty
and her Council here do judge of that House of Guise ; and so may you, as you shall see cause,
take ad vantage hereby to maintain the former reasons, published by her Majesty, for justification
of her doings ; [in assisting the Princes and Protestants in France.] The process of the trial
may be seen in Strype's Annals, ch. xxxiii. The parties, by the whole consent of the Judges,
were convicted of treason, but pardoned by the Queen.
302 MEMOIRS OP LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
not merely to facilitate the entrance of the English troops into Normandy,
but as a pledge for the restoration of Calais, which was to be made the basis of
any peace to be concluded between the Prince of Conde and his adversaries ;*
but in the end, after supplying the Prince's party, according to treaty, with many
large subsidies, to enable them to engage troops from Germany, and sending over
considerable forces to the Earl of Warwick, to assist the cause, they made a
peace, without any consideration had of the English. This was highly resented
by the Queen, and as Cecil wrote to Sir Thomas Smith, " she meant not to be so
abused." After the death of the Duke of Guise, the contest was renewed, but in
a very different shape ; the Prince of Conde joined the royal army, to compel
the English to evacuate Havre ; the King was carried thither to witness the
siege, Elizabeth being reminded that she had professed to hold it only for the
King. The demand of Calais, however, was kept up,. both by negotiation, and
every show of a most determined resolution to keep the place, till it was
accomplished ; but a sudden plaguef breaking out in the garrison, in the
summer of 1563, compelled the Earl of Warwick to give it 'up, which not long
after was followed by a peace.
Newhaven had been in possession of the English eleven months ; it certainly was
subdued at last by pestilence, rather than by the sword of the enemy, yet the French
made great boasts, in which the Protestants took part, much to their discredit.
The Earl of Warwick, whose letters to the Council, to the Secretary, and occa-
sionally to the Queen herself, may be seen in Forbes's Collection, appears to
have conducted himself with singular patience and courage, under a succession
of disappointments and embarrassments, from the first moment of its occupation.
As directed against the power of the Guises, the alliance formed with the Pro-
testants may be considered prudent, but the hope of recovering Calais seems to
have been too readily indulged; it was scarcely to be expected that any French
party could be sincere in promising it, or very forward in bringing the contest
to such an issue ; the Chancellor d' Hospital, accordingly, who was against the
* See Strype's account of these affairs, taken from Cecil's private letters, Annals, ch. xxxii.
t This plague, by the return of the troops, was conveyed to London, where it raged in such fury
in the month of August, that 1000 died in a week. Towards the end of the year, that is, in the
midst of winter, we read of another complaint prevalent in London, through the extremity of the
cold, called thepoow; which particularly affected the Queen and her Secretary Cecil; the latter
of whom was so affected by it as to be deprived of his sight, and the Queen herself could sign no
dispatches or letters, or attend to any business, though otherwise in perfect health. It appears
to have been a very extraordinary affection of the nose and eyes.
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 303
Guisian faction, was warm in his address of congratulation to the King, upon
the evacuation of Newhaven, asserting that the English by this war had for- '
feited all title and right to claim Calais. [Camden.'] The Chancellor, however,
should have recollected how disgracefully the Prince of Conde had abandoned
this condition of his own agreement.
It was in the year 1563, and the fifth of her Majesty's reign, that the Council
of Trent, which began in the year 1545, as we have shewn in our first volume,
was brought to a conclusion. It appears to have excited great alarm amongst
the Helvetian Reformers, from a letter of Bullinger to Fox, written in March
1563, in which he says,* " We do extremely lament the misfortune of the most
flourishing kingdom of France, this year well near destroyed (who would have
believed it?) by the bloody house of Guise, that house of Ahab, and we fear
worse still. The news is from Italy, that the Cardinal of Loraine, who has en-
tered Italy'upon the pretence of going to the Council of Trent, stirs up the
Princes there to take arms against the faithful. — The Council of Trent itself is
contriving strange things."
England was greatly blamed for not sending ministers to this celebrated
Council, and very naturally charged by the Papists with a fear of having its
heresy exposed and confuted. Thus Dorman wrote, and was answered by
Nowell ; Scipio, by Bishop Jewel ; and the Archbishop is said to have been con-
cerned in a cautionary address to the public, against the decrees of the Council,
in a work entitled, " A godly and necessary admonition of the decrees and
canons of the Council of Trent, celebrated under Pius the Fourth bishop of
Rome, in the years of our Lord 1562, 1563; written for those godly disposed
persons sakes which look for amendment of doctrine and ceremonies to be made
by General Councils." — The method of the book being to set down the decrees
in convenient paragraphs, and then to subjoin observations and answers to each.
It may be considered fortunate, that England was blamed by the Romanists for
not attending this celebrated Council, since it had the effect of calling forth such
answers, as deserve to be regarded to this day as very important historical do-
cuments, serving to shew with how much wisdom and consideration the de-
parture from the Church of Rome had been contemplated by the most learned
* " Dolemus nos vehementissime casu florentissimi regni Gallte, quod Guisiana domus san-
guinaria, domus Achab, hoc annopropemodum (quis credidisset), evertit; ac calamitosissima sub-
inde veretnur. — Ex Italia nuntiatur, lotharingum Cardinalem, qui Itallam preetextu eoncilii Tri-
dentini adeundi ingressus est, commovere ad arma, principes Italiae contra fideles. — Molitur mira
Concilium ipsum Tridentinum."
304 / MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGH LEY. [1563.
among the Reformists. We cannot forbear giving a short specimen from the
answer of Jewel to Scipio, an Italian gentleman with whom the Bishop had been
formerly well acquainted while pursuing his studies at Padua. — The Bishop
asks, why he should wonder that England sent no ambassadors to that Council,
since Englishmen were not the only ones absent ? why did he not as well won-
der, that neither the three patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexan-
dria were there ? nor Presbyter John, nor the Grecians, Armenians, Persians,
Egyptians, Moors, Ethiopians, and Indians came not ? For many of them be-
lieved in Christ, had their bishops, and were baptized Christians ; nor had any
ambassador come from those parts of the world, or rather well would he see that
the Pope did not call them; and that his ecclesiastical decrees took no hold of
them. That it was more to be wondered at, that the Pope should call such men
to a council whom he had before condemned of heresy, and openly pronounced
excommunicate, without hearing either them or their plea. — Where were the
ambassadors of the Kings of Denmark, Sweden, and the Princes of Germany,
the Switzers, the Grisons and the Hanse Towns ? those of the realm of Scot-
land, and the dukedom of Prussia? nay, the Pope himself came not to his own
council. And what a pride was it for one man, at his own pleasure, to assem-
ble together all Christian kings, princes, and bishops when he listed, and require
them to be at his call and not to come himself. — He questioned the power of
Pope Pius to call a council, more than any other Bishop. — The ancientest coun-
cils, the Nicene, the Ephesine, &c. were called by the Roman emperors, Con-
stantine, Theodosius, &c.
Then he went on to mention the wrongs the Popes of Rome had done us.
That they had, as often as they pleased, armed our people against their
Sovereigns, pulled the sceptre out of our Kings' hands and the crowns from
their heads. They would have the kingdom to be theirs, and held in their
name. That of late years they stirred up against us sometimes the French,
sometimes the Emperor. That it was needless to rehearse what the intention
of Pius himself had been towards us: what he had done ; what he had spoken;
what he had practised ; what he had threatened. That it was fit that councils
should be free ; that every one might be present who chose to be so, and those
who stayed away not blamed, as was the case in former times, as he shewed by
many instances. That now-a-days the intent or scope of councils was not to
discover truth, or confute falsehood, but to establish the Roman tyranny ; to
set wars on foot ; to set Christian Princes together by the ears ; to raise money,
sometimes for the Holy Land, sometimes for the building of St. Peter's church ;
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 305
sometimes for other uses, I know not what, or rather abuses all. That by the
very bull of indiction of the Council by Julius III., whoever should appear at
the Council, of those who had left the Roman Church, were only to be heard
upon their recantation, and that not taking place to be condemned as Heretics,
unheard. That we did not fear or fly, but desire and wish for a Council, so it
were free, ingenuous, Christian. So that men did meet as the Apostles did ;
so that Abbots and Bishops were freed from their oath, by which they were
bound to the Pope ; and our men modestly and freely heard, and not condemned
before they were heard ; and one man might not have power to overthrow
whatsoever was done. That for themselves they had done nothing but with
very good reason. They had called a full synod of Bishops ; and by consent
of all sorts purged this Church of those excrements which either the negligence
or malice of men had brought in. That they had restored all things, as much
as possibly they could, to the ancient purity of the Apostolical times, and to
the similitude of the Primitive Church. That this was justly in their power to
do, and because they could do it, they did it boldly.
Much more may be seen of this letter in Strype, and the whole in the English
edition of Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent ; we have selected such
parts only as appear to us to contain a fair historical account of the conduct
and proceedings of England, both with regard to the Council, as one called by
the Pope, and her own synodical endeavours to restore things, as the Bishop
states, " to the ancient purity of the Apostolical times, and to the similitude of
the Primitive Church." Always considering that in some respects a similitude
must have been all that could be expected in so different a state of the world,
and under such a variety of habits, manners, and outward condition, as the
several states of Christendom were then known to exhibit. That absolute
precision, to which many seemed to look, could scarcely be held practicable
under the change of manners and customs, induced by the lapse of time.
Having shewn, from a reference to Bishop Jewel's letter to Scipio, how well
prepared the heads of our reformed or restored Church were at that time, to
answer all the objections and cavils of the advocates for the Council of Trent and
Church of Rome, we shall turn to notice another extraordinary attack made upon
the newly established faith of the kingdom, by a Portuguese writer, Hieronymus
Osorius, who, in a letter to the Queen, had endeavoured, by libelling the
proceedings of her government and people, in the changes that had taken
place, to persuade her to return to the Church of Rome. The letter being
VOL. II. 2 R
306 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
written in a good style, and in the general language of Europe, it seems to
have been judged almost necessary that it should receive a reply, in the same
language, and in no inferior style, but in truth from the pen of an able scholar
and powerful critic. Dr. Walter Haddon, then Master of Requests to the Queen,
was the person pitched upon by Cecil, who was not long in preparing his
answer; which appeared, after being overlooked by the Secretary and Sir
Thomas Smith, under the following title, Gual. Haddonus Hieronymo Osorio
Lusitano S. D. — This reply may be regarded as another strong vindication of
the reformation of our Church ; and a most able answer to the objections of
Romanists in general. Cecil perused it here, and then transmitted it to Sir
Thomas Smith, in Paris, to have it printed there, as Osorius's Epistle had been ;
that such as had read that calumniatory writing might also read this, and right
and justice be thereby done to the English nation ; but it had nearly been lost
in the scuffle. The Chancellor of Paris hesitated to grant permission, and Sir
Thomas having put it into the hands of the celebrated Henry Stevens to be
printed, it was by some stratagem taken from him, and not without great stir
on the part of the Ambassador, recovered, and at lasted printed in 1563, either
in France or elsewhere. Strype, in his Annals, has given so large an account of
this able performance, that we shall be contented to refer our readers to that very
useful work ; though from the intimacy known to have subsisted between the
learned author and the Secretary, the strong interest taken by the latter in pro-
curing it to be written, his oversight and, perhaps, correction of the original, and
his implied consent therefore, to all the doctrines and opinions it sets forth, we
could wish it were more in our power to do justice to a discussion of such very
high importance ; it being no less a vindication of the purity and sincerity of
design, in all that was done by our early Reformers, in their separation from the
Church of Rome, than of the Church itself; as still exhibiting a monument of
their great care and learned labours. The author rallies Osorius for fancying
that he, being a stranger, could deceive the Queen by libelling her people ;
assures him, that her Majesty's knowledge and discernment were such, that she
could as well teach him as learn of him ; that she was equally above being
corrupted by his praises or circumvented by his flatteries ; that therefore, his
labour in that way was quite in vain ; for what he called Novelty of Error, her
Majesty knew to be Antiquity of Truth. But the controversy was not allowed
to terminate here. Osorius, who was now become Bishop of Sylva or Anco-
burge, replied to Haddon in three books of severe and bitter invective against
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 307
England, while the English Jesuits at Lou vain, laboured all they could to deter
Haddon from writing any more; endeavouring to intimidate him by a prophetic
denunciation of some strange harm to happen to him, if he did not stop his
pen ; but he was not to be shaken. He answered, that " he stood in defence of
his country, and would persist therein so long as breath was in his body;" which,
as it turned out, was not long ; for he died before he had gone half way in his
second confutation of his angry opponent ; and as his death occurred in Flan-
ders, from whence he had had the warning given of the danger he had to
apprehend, it is but reasonable to suppose, that, according to the temper and
character of those sad times, the cause of his death could not escape suspicion.
— On his decease Fox continued his unfinished answer ; adding much of his
own, and in an almost equally good style, being an able scholar. This work
was afterwards turned into English, and published in 4to, 1581 ; "and to every
thing that was writ," says Strype, " I make no doubt, Secretary Cecil was privy,
and all went through his hand, and the writer had his directions; since the
work was of such a public import, and he had concerned himself with this
controversy from the beginning,"
We may judge from the above, how constantly and invariably the mind of
the great man* whose life we are recording, was occupied with the affairs of
the Church, as well as of the State; and of the correct views he must have had
of the course of the Reformation, and our separation from the Church of Rome,
from the very beginning. Contemporary with all the great reformers, English
and foreign, we may regard him, under Elizabeth, as the main connecting link
between the dead and the living ; and as carrying on the great work begun
* About this time, Sir William appears to have received a very extraordinary letter, from Sir
Nicholas Poyntz, giving an account of the death of his mother, Lady Poyntz. This unhappy
lady had married a second husband, who treated her so ill, that she was dying of u broken heart,
and totally debarred by her cruel husband of all proper medical attendance. And she had
reason to apprehend besides, that she lay under the Queen's displeasure ; her Majesty hearing
of this (probably through the Secretary), wrote her a kind letter, with 50/. for medical help ; and
Sir William himself, wrote her a letter of comfort, sending the whole by a special Court Mes-
senger. The letters, &c. arrived on the 21st of March, when she had almost lost lier sight,
gpeech, and hearing, and on which very day she died ; but, as her son wrote to Cecil, no
sooner had the messenger delivered his message, and read to her the two letters he brought from
the Queen and the Secretary, than she recovered perfect hearing, perfect sight, and a perfect
voice. She appointed in what order the letters should be answered, and having with her own
hand signed the answers, and kissed and delivered them to the messenger, she presently died ;
with memory, speech, sight, and hearing, perfect to the very last. — Annals, ch. xxxvii.
308 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
while he was yet but a youth. As we shall have no more to do with the sittings
of the Council of Trent, though its decrees will often perhaps engage our notice,
we shall transcribe two notes, the one from Jortin's Charges, the other from
McCrie's Life of Knox ; our only object in doing so, being to record facts that, in
all strictness, may be said to be closely connected with the history before us.
" Mary Queen of Scots, wrote a letter to the Fathers assembled at Trent, in
which she declared that she submitted herself to that Council, and promised, as
soon as she should be in possession of the crown of England, that of right
belonged to her, to reduce the two kingdoms to the obedience of the Holy See.
Hence, says Jortin, it may be judged in what manner she would have ruled
over us, if she had succeeded in her projects. This was in May, 1563.
Du Pin, t. xv. p. 291." — Jortin s Sermons, &c. vol. vii. 375. The other is as
follows: — "In a letter to the Council of Trent, 18th March, 1563-4, Mary
expresses her regret, that the situation of her affairs (Jiujus temporis tanta iirjuria)
did not permit her to send some of her Prelates to that Council ; and assures
them of her great and unalterable devotion to the Apostolic See, 'nostra
perpetua mente ac voluntate, in ejusdem sedis observantia et submissione.' In a
letter, January 3, of the same year, she entreats the Cardinal of Lorrain to
assure the Pope of her resolution to live and die a Catholic. And on the last
day of the same month, she writes to his Holiness himself, laments the dam-
nable errors (damnabili errori], in which she found her subjects plunged ; and
informs him, that her intention, from the time she had left France, had uniformly
been to re-establish the ancient religion." — Life of John Knox, 1813, ii. 110.
He cites Robertson, vol. ii. 108, Lond. 1809; and certain MS. Letters (from
the Barbarini Library), Adv. Lib. A. 2, 11. — Mr. Turner, in his recent History
of the Reign of Elizabeth, cites these letters, thinking, as he says (p. 16, vol. ii.
note 60), that they had not been noticed before. He is very severe upon Mary
for her dissimulation, in carrying on such a correspondence, while she was
pretending to take a contrary part in her public government. And we must
confess we had come to a similar conclusion, before we could have any oppor-
tunity of seeing Mr. Turner's work.
In the course of this year, Mary had received some ill treatment from France,
her dower had been detained ; the duchy of Chatelherault, or revenue thereof,
had been taken from the House of Hamilton, and the places they held under the
French crown disposed of to others ; and they appeared to be the more
inclined to slight her in consequence of the death of her uncle, the Duke of
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 309
Guise, who had fallen by the hands of an assassin, before Orleans. But as she
was upon pretty fair terms with Elizabeth, and some approaches seemed to be
making to a stricter union between the two Queens than suited the purposes of
the French, the latter* began to be alarmed at their own indiscreet proceedings.
They now therefore suddenly began to take a different course with her, and
fearing that, in her resentment of the affronts she had received, she might fall
from their alliance, and be friends with Elizabeth, they sent a special messenger
to her, as from her uncle the Cardinal, with many nattering promises if she
would keep up the ancient amity, and offering her marriage with the Duke of
Austria, on whom the Emperor would bestow, if the match took place, the
county of Tyrol for her dower. We are particularly told that the object of this
proposal was, to render her and the Catholics of Scotland a party to their quarrel.
These are the circumstances that require to be dwelt upon, in the history of
this unfortunate Princess, if we would wish to arrive at the real truth. The
design of such a marriage was notoriously to draw Mary away from all friend-
ship with England ; and no doubt with a further view, still to procure for her
the crown of that devoted country, should their policy be suffered to take effect.
We may ask, was Elizabeth to behold these things going forward without an
effort to avert the consequences of an alliance so immediately directed against
herself and her country ? Were her Ministers and servants to see the danger
with which she was threatened, and not awaken her attention to it by putting
her on her guard ? And how was she to counteract such projects ? Certainly by
measures, intolerable in private life, and only tolerable among Princes, in
consequence of the general understanding, that royal marriages can scarcely
ever in the nature of things be regarded as engagements of any free choice ;
in some shape or other they must have a reference to other interests besides
those of the particular parties, and must be understood not only to require the
consent of friends, as in cases of private contract, but of enemies, rivals, and all
who may be threatened by the political consequences of any projected union of
crowns, states, or dominions.
To hinder the match proposed to Mary by the House of Guise, became in
this respect, therefore, an obvious measure of 'defence to Elizabeth; and Ran-
* That is, according to Robertson, Catherine de Medicis, who having heretofore done all the
ill offices she could to her daughter-in-law, now sought to appease her, for fear she should turn
to Elizabeth, whom Catherine both feared and hated. But, says he, Mary laid little stress upon
professions of friendship which came from a Princess of such a false and unfeeling heart.
310 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1563.
dolph was accordingly dispatched to Scotland, to advise with Mary upon her
second marriage, as a step which must eventually either throw her back com-
pletely into the vortex of foreign politics, to the discomfiture of all her Protestant
subjects, and the great danger of England, or secure to her, perhaps for ever,
the attachment of the former and the friendship of the latter.
It may be easy to talk of Mary's being an independent Sovereign, not to be
dictated to, or interfered with, by her invidious and less amiable neighbour,
but these are not the considerations that should have weight with the historian of
such perplexed and unsettled times ; the above circumstances, may at least serve
to shew, that she was not so independent, as to conclude, without interruption,
any firm friendship or alliance with Elizabeth. The message sent to her by the
latter, through Randolph, was to the following effect : " Her sister of England
desired her to take such a person as might content herself, love her people, and
continue the amity with England. The two first were left to the discretion of
herself and Council ; but as to her marrying with that foreign prince beforesaid,
that Queen Elizabeth disliked of it ; since it was the work of the Cardinal of
Lorrain, an enemy to her, and that such a match would endanger the private
amity and concord of the two nations, and the advancement of the Scotch title
to succeed to the English crown ; and that the states of England had, upon the
rumour of this, endeavoured to have somewhat concluded against her ; and
therefore Queen Elizabeth advised her not to hazard the present amity, and the
future expectation, but if she inclined to marry, to select some such of noble
birth, within England, as might, in respect of his country, give assurance to the
Nobility and the Commons of future tranquillity ; and so by that means to
advance herself to succeed ; which the Queen promised she would further, and
that therefore, she, the Scotch Queen, would not respect only the content of her
own affection, and the honour of her uncle, that in her first marriage, and by his
advices then had hazarded her best hopes ; but have regard to the peace of her
people, and the amity with her next neighbour, from whom she had the fairest
expectations, which must be done by choosing her an husband within this isle,
and not a stranger." The purport of this message from Elizabeth to Mary, was
no sooner made known in France, than the utmost endeavours were used to
turn her away from any such match as Elizabeth had suggested ; but she was
promised, if she would observe the old and mutual respect with France, against
her common ancient enemy, England, present payment of her dower and pen-
sion ; wines for her provision, without impost or custom ; arms and artillery,
1563.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 311
when she should need ; the band and men of [French] guards to be restored to
her nation ; her merchants to enjoy their privileges, enlarged ; and her servants
(more than before) admitted to their suspended pensions.
" In this court of faction and want," adds Strype, " no sooner was this offered,
than enforced to that height, that the Queen was almost distracted amidst the
importunity of so many private ends, profit, liberty, aaid revenge." This is
extremely probable, and should make us cautious how we throw all the blame of
Mary's troubles and perplexities exclusively on Elizabeth and the English
Court. Some things, however, were suggested to her by her foreign connexions,
which were certainly very fair and reasonable, First, that to marry an English
subject, was a match too base and dishonourable for the height of her parentage,
estate, and their alliance ; secondly, that if (as was proposed) Leicester* should
be offered, it might rather show a good-will in Queen Elizabeth, than a good-
meaning; thirdly, that for strength of her title by Parliament, what one will
establish another may revoke; and fourthly, that to marry in her own rank, would
increase honour and alliance, such as might make her neighbours fearful to
offer indignity, and enable her to retain her own, and recover her right, if it
should be opposed. Of Mary's perplexed situation, we may judge from this
short account of things ; according to the same author, to whose large and
correct collections we are obliged to refer so often, Elizabeth's situation was
not more free from difficulties. " Such opposite counsels," says he, " had
Queen Elizabeth to encounter ; but the Scotch Queen, for all this, as yet stood
firm to be directed by her sister ; referring over this business to a conference at
Barwick the year ensuing. These Scotch matters were earnestly pursued by
both Queens, the two following years, as shall be shewn in due place."
The Secretary this year put forth a second edition of Queen Catherine Parr's
" Lamentations of a Sinner bewailing the Ignorance of her blind Life." The
first appearance of this work had taken place in the year 1548, the period of
the Queen's death ; with a preface written by the Secretary himself, and which
was this year also re-published. These meditations expressed the contrition
of the royal penitent for having passed so many years of her life in Popery — how
many these were, we are not prepared to say.
* " She [Mary] imparteth the matter to Elizabeth, who, by Randolph, advised her the same
things which I have before spoken of, taking her an husband, and then more expressly com-
mended unto her, for an husband, Robert Dudley, whose wife being one Robsart's heir, had died
of late by a fall from a steep place." — Camden,
CHAP. VI.
1564—1565.
Sixth year* of Queen Elizabeth's reign began November 17, 1563.
Seventh year began November 17, 1564s
Ills arising from Royal Marriages— Different Matrimonial Projects for Mary— Elizabeth
proposes Leicester to her — Melvil sent on Matrimonial Embassies— Pictures— Duke
Casimir— Archduke Charles— Conduct of Mary and Elizabeth with regard to Leicester
— Return of Lennox to Scotland — Melvil' s Account of Elizabeth and Dudley — Ceremony
of his being made Earl of Leicester — Characters of Lord Burghley, Elizabeth, Mary,
Darnley, Leicester, Archduke Charles, by Miss Aikin — Lord Burghley's Letter to
Mundt — His Notes of the Proceedings of Scotland — Of Mary's Marriage with Darnley
— Lord and Lady Lennox — Lord Darnley— Mr. Tamworth — Sir Francis Englefield's
Letters — Duchess of Parma — Netherlands — Killegrew — Lines by Lady Ki/legrew —
Lord Burghley1 s eldest Son married — Sir Thomas Chaloner's Death— Of Lord Burghley's
concise Notes — Account of the Queen's Visit to Cambridge — Her first Visit to Keiiilworth
— Mayor of Coventry — Letter of John Fox — Hales' Book on the Succession — Lord
Hertford and Lady Catherine Grey — Lord John Grey — Hales — Letters from Lady
Catherine — Dennum's Letter — Puritans — Cartwright — Sampson and Humphrey — Bui-
linger — St. John's College, Cambridge — Lord Burghley appealed to in all Cases- — -Dispute
between the Bishop of Winchester and Feckenham — Dominicus Sampsonius' Letter —
Books sent to England by the Papists in Flanders — Protest of the People of Antwerp
against the Court of Inquisition — Caryl — Letters to Lord Burghley — Dr. Goodman's
Application — Strype on the Interview between Mary and Elizabeth.
BEFORE we go far into the particulars of the history of the two years we are
now entering upon, and which, for reasons that will appear hereafter, it would
be difficult to separate, we must revert to the unpleasant circumstances attending
royal marriages, since, at no period do they appear to have been more fully
* Camden calls 1564 the seventh year of the Queen's rei^n, reckoning 1558 the first; but this
is evidently wrong for the reasons we have before stated. The first year of the Queen's reign did
not end before November 16, 1559; 45 days only before the commencement of the year 1560,
according to our common reckoning. This makes 1560 the second year, and 1564 the sixth, and
so Lord Burghley himself considered it, as appears from the following entry in his Diary:
" Nov. 17, 1563, Mr. Randolph sent to the Queen of Scotts. Anno Vlto Eliz."
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 313
exemplified than during the sixteenth century ; or, to apply more imme-
diately to the work we have in hand, during the long life of Lord Burghley.
Much of our first volurrte was taken up with shewing, how sadly the two neigh-
bouring and now united kingdoms of England and Scotland were brought into
collision by the contest and competition between England and France for the
hand of Mary, while yet actually an infant, and how fatally for the repose
of Scotland the interests of those two great kingdoms seemed to depend on the
decision of this case. While Scotland continued an independent, or rather
separate kingdom, from England, but much more when, as such, she became
more united than ever with France, not only by treaties of alliance but family
connexions, the British Isle could but be regarded as a house divided against
itself, and the union of the whole, if practicable, must have appeared to be an
object almost as much pointed out by nature as by any consideration of political
expediency. England appears to have been at all times the rival of France,
but the former had now begun to be of such importance in the adjustment of a
proper balance of power, not thought of in former times, as to render it prudent
in France, as well as in other continental kingdoms, to look carefully to her
aggrandizement by any new acquisitions. Here, then, began the sorrows of
Mary, as we have before intimated, not from the malice of any individual or
individuals directed personally against herself, but from a competition and
perplexity of political interests, bearing immediately upon the already divided
country over which she was, from her cradle, destined to rule, for the disturbances
in the Church, or Scottish Reformation may be said to have begun before she
was born.
It would be vain to attempt to conjecture what might have been the result of
her marrying Edward of England, to whom she was betrothed ; but it is cer-
tainly very remarkable, and not undeserving of notice, while we are upon the
subject of royal marriages, that, amiable and worthy and wise as that young
Prince is generally admitted to have been, three of the most unfortunate female
victims of court policy known in the annals of the world,* should have been in
* We need scarcely pass the prescribed limits of the history we are writing, though indeed
much past the time of Edward, to find a. fourth victim of this cruel policy ; we mean the unhappy
Lady Arabella Stuart, the history of whose " loves" has been so well and so feelingly described
by M. d' Israeli, in the second series of his Curiosities of Literature, vol. i. Having some pre-
tensions to the throne of England, her hand became an object of speculation not only to Kings
and Princes, but even to the Pope of Rome ; of course not for himself, but for one of his Cardinpjs
VOL. II. 2 S
314 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
the way of being united to him ; Mary Queen of Scots, the Lady Jane Grey,
and the Princess Isabella (or Elizabeth) of France, daughter of Henry II. Of
the melancholy end of the two first we need say nothing here, as they fall
naturally into the course of the history we are writing ; but, of the latter, we
have to state, that she became the marriage victim of the peace of Chateau Cam-
bresis, in the first year of the Queen's reign ; being united, upon Elizabeth's
refusal of his hand, to that bigoted tyrant Philip, after having been betrothed,
as it is said, to his own son Don Carlos ; and, what seldom happens in such
betrothments, an object of unfeigned attachment, on the part of the latter: an
attachment which became mutual, and brought both to an untimely and igno-
minious end.* But to return —
The years 1564, 1565, may be said to have brought all the perplexities about
Mary's second marriage to a crisis. We are now able to enumerate the several
matches proposed to her, or provided for her by others, and to shew, that if
Elizabeth thought her own interests gave her a right to interfere, others thought
the same of theirs. The Austrians, being unwilling she should marry another
French Prince to the aggrandizement of that kingdom, entered into negotiations
with the Guises, who, being less interested for France than for themselves, were
not unwilling to bestow her upon one of the imperial Princes, either the Archduke
Charles, or, as some have written, the Emperor's second son Ferdinand, for
whom they designed to procure the Empire to the exclusion of Maximilian,
King of Bohemia. — (Forbes, ii. 116.) While Catherine de Medicis, liking
of the house of Savoy, whom he actually secularized in hopes of his becoming, through a projected
marriage with the Lady Arabella, a Catholic King of England instead of the protestant James I.
But in proportion as others sought her hand, on the ground of her royal pretensions, her jealous
relative James seemed bent upon keeping her unmarried; while she, regardless of crowns,
scepters, and thrones, scrupled not to indulge an early and more natural attachment, by suffering
herself to be privately united to a younger son of the Seymour family ; highly deserving of her, but
which fond step ended in her ultimate destruction. After a most romantic attempt to escape
beyond seas with her attached and faithful husband, they were cruelly separated, herself brought
back and committed to the ToweY, where she ended her wretched life in a state of distraction. It
is very much to the purpose of the observations we have been making on royal marriages, to add
the following remark of Mr. Frankland on this miserable case: " Henry, Elizabeth, and James,"
he observes, " considered that it was needful, as indeed in all sovereignties, that those who were
near the crown should be narrowly looked into for marriage." James seems certainly to have
looked as narrowly, and, in the case above, full as unfeelingly into these matters, as ever Elizabeth
could have done in the case of his own mother.
* See, for a farther account of this unfortunate Princess, our first volume, p. 691.
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 315
neither to see the Austrians nor the Guises advanced by such an alliance, pro-
posed another of her own sons, Henry Duke of Anjou, afterwards King. But,
Philip II., jealous of all three, of his uncle the Emperor, of the Guises, and of
the French, endeavoured to procure her hand for his own son Don Carlos. Her
uncles of Lorrain had previously offered it to the King of Navarre and his brother
the Prince of Conde. — (See Mundt's letter to Cecil, Feb. 1563. Holies, 4 1 1 .)
The King of Sweden and the Duke of Ferrara may still be added to the list of
those who aspired to her hand, and even the Cardinal of Bourbon, " who," says
Sir Thomas Smith, [Forbes, 287.] "is no priest." In every instance, we discover
the selfish motives of the proposers of these marriages, and their total disregard
of Mary's own feelings and inclinations, which were to be conciliated before or
afterwards, as the parties might be able to manage. While the above projects
then were on foot, to keep her in the interests of her own relatives the Guises,
or in those of Austria, of France, of Spain, of Sweden, &c. ; to keep her in the
interests of England, a negotiation was opened in 1564, the most extraordinary,
perhaps, that could be imagined, and one not admitting of any perfect explana-
tion to this day ; we mean the proposal made to her by Elizabeth, of matching
her with her own great favourite, the Lord Robert Dudley. We have seen what
was the purport of Elizabeth's message by Randolph ; allusion is there made to
the circumstance we have above mentioned, that Mary's "best hopes" had been
early frustrated " by the ambition of her uncles," in regard to her first marriage,
and it is strongly pressed upon her, as she would value the future friendship of
England, and her prospects of succession to the English crown, to marry the
second time " within this isle," for the peace of both countries, and the better
assurance of the state of England in her favour should Elizabeth die without
issue. But, the offer of Lord Robert is altogether inexplicable to this day ;
Randolph had, at first, a secret commission to propose it to Murray and
Lethington, at which time also, Sir James Melvil has told us in his Memoirs,
that he was applied to by Randolph to forward the marriage with the Queen as
meetest of all other. Melvil had been the very person previously pitched upon to
make himself acquainted with the Archduke Charles of Austria, when the pro-
ject was on foot to make a match between the latter and Mary. Lethington had,
by command of Mary, expressly written to him, being then in Germany, to inform
himself of the Archduke's " religion, his rents, and his qualities, his age and
stature, and desired to send his picture* if it could be done." Of Melvil's inter-
* Melvil was in the way to become a general commissioner, as it would seem, for the con-
veyance of these royal matrimonial portraits. When Charles of Austria, the brother of Maxi-
316 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
view and conference upon this subject with the Archduke's brother Maximilian,
King of the Romans, with whom he was invited to tarry twenty days, a curious
account is to be seen in the Memoirs, but which it is not necessary to enter upon
here, except to observe, which is .certainly very noticeable, that Maximilian
appeared to be against his brother's marriage with Mary, for fear, that thereby
becoming in her right King of Scotland andEngland,\ie might be tempted to usurp
the Netherlands. Whether this disposition on the part of Maximilian occasioned
Melvil to be no very warm advocate for the Archduke at Mary's Court, certain
it is, that, in his way home through England, he learned from Elizabeth's own
mouth all that was afterwards communicated to Mary, Murray, Lethington, and
himself, by Randolph ; namely, the great desire of Elizabeth to have her marry
" within the isle," and some nobleman of high birth — which turned out to be
Leicester. To add, however, to the complication of these matrimonial projects,
Elizabeth chose herself to look after the Archduke Charles again, and opened
a negotiation the most strange that could be, if she had really no design to marry
him; even the Emperor and the Archduke seem to have distrusted her so much, that
when first proposed to them by the Duke of Wirtemburgh,* the Emperor wrote
milian was proposed to Mary, the daughter of the Emperor was sought for the young King
Charles IX. of France, and Melvil was charged by the Emperor Ferdinand with the Princess'
picture to be delivered to Charles ; which was accordingly done, while the French Court was at
Paris ; and, as Melvil writes, he found the young King so very desirous to see the picture, that
he cut the thread himself that bound the wax-cloth on it. After this, returning to the Court of
the Elector Palatine, being called home to Scotland, Prince Casimir, the Elector's son, took
occasion to desire him, on his way to Scotland, to take his (Casimir's) picture to Queen Elizabeth.
This commission he also undertook, only requesting that he might have also the pictures of his father
and mother and all his brothers and sisters, with a letter from the Elector to procure him audience
of Elizabeth. Supplied with all these things, he set off for England, and being arrived, was soon
admitted loan interview with the Queen, to whom, having discoursed largely of the worth of the
Elector and his family, he intimated that he had been presented with all their pictures. " So
soon as she heard this," he writes, "she inquired if I had the picture of the Duke Casimir, de-
siring to see it ; and when I alleged I had left the pictures in London, she being then at Hampton
Court, and that I was ready to go on upon my journey, she said I should not part till she had
seen all the pictures : so the next day I delivered them all to her Majesty, and she desired to keep
them all night, and she called upon my Lord Robert Dudley to be judge of Duke Casimir's
picture, and appointed me to meet her the next morning in the garden, where she caused to
deliver them all unto me, giving me thanks for the sight of them." The Duke's picture made no
favourable impression upon Elizabeth, so Melvil wrote to dissuade him from meddling any more
with that marriage, who wisely returned him thanks for his pains, and consoled himself by an
immediate union with the eldest daughter of the Elector of Saxony.
* The Duke of Wirtemburgh was the person through whom Mundt seems to have communi-
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 317
to him very sensibly, that neither he nor his son were very willing to expose
themselves afresh to any such disappointment as they had already experienced.
The Emperor's expressions, as copied in a letter from Mundt to Cecil in Haynes's
Collection, are very curious : " Et tametsi hoc tempore nos in eandem actionem
intromittere velimus, tamen, ex eo quod prius evenit, eandem curam similis suc-
cessus subire cogeremur : cum et hoc tempore similes causse et occasiones
incidere possunt : quod ut existimationem nostram gravaret, ita nos deridiculos
faceret, adeoque neque nos, neque filius noster hactenus ullas cogitationes de
hoc connubio habuimus, neque modo multum intendimus earn causam ulterius
prosequi, sed earn ita linquere."
As the Emperor died not many months after, and we shall have more to say
upon the subject, when the interruption occasioned by his death ceasing, the
matter was resumed, we shall return to our account of what was passing in
Scotland. The problematical offer of Leicester, was not in any haste rejected by
Mary ; Elizabeth pretended that she had made him an Earl, on purpose to
qualify him the more for so high an honour : both Queens appointed Commis-
sioners to treat of the affair, and the Earl of Bedford, Governor of Berwick,
was directed to confer with Murray and Lethington. In the mean while it
would be difficult to fathom the designs of any of the parties. In June, 1564,
Mary appears to have declined meeting Elizabeth unless she could be declared
heir apparent ; this very thing seems to have been made a condition by Eliza-
beth of her marrying Leicester.* To attain this grand object, may, therefore,
cated with the Emperor Ferdinand, which may help to explain what appears to have puzzled
other authors, namely an offer made by that Prince to Elizabeth about the year 1563, of his ser-
vices, in case she were minded to marry. " It might be curious," says Miss Aikin in her Court
of Elizabeth, " to inquire of what nature the assistance politely proffered by the Duke in this
matter, and favourably received by her Majesty, could be ; it does not appear that he tendered
his own hand to her acceptance." Mundt's correspondence with Cecil, in Haynes, seems very
well to explain it.
" If the offer of Leicester can be explained, perhaps we have no better clue to go by than
Elizabeth's own account of her purposes, in conference with Melvil ; " She esteemed him,"
[Leicester] as she told Melvil, " as her brother and best friend, whom she would have herself
married had she ever minded to have taken a husband, but being determined to end her life in
virginity, she wished that the Queen her sister might marry him, as meetest of all other with
whom she could find in her heart to declare her second person, [i. e. heir apparent, or pre-
sumptive.] For being matched with him, it would best remove out of her mind all fears and
suspicions to be offended by any usurpation before her death ; being assured that he was so
loving and trusty, that he would never permit any such thing to be attempted during her time."
318 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
have been a motive with Mary to listen to the proposal of Leicester, and she
certainly must have given room to Randolph to think so, for his letters to
Cecil plainly signify, that she had an inclination to marry him ; still, negotia-
tions were on foot for the return of Lennox to Scotland, sanctioned both by
Murray and Lethington. That nobleman appears to have arrived at Edinburgh,
Sept. 27, and on the 27th of Nov. following, to have asked permission for his
son, Lord Darnley, to join him there ; who did not, however, arrive till
Feb. 13, 1564-5. On Feb. 5, it seems, Randolph had written to England,
giving pretty strong intimation that Mary would accede to the marriage with
Leicester, and yet on March 20 following, about five weeks only after Darnley 's
arrival, it became almost clear that she would marry the latter. It can scarcely
be doubted, therefore, that there was deception on both sides, as far as regarded
the two Queens. Elizabeth, perhaps, meant to deceive in proposing Leicester,
and Mary, perhaps, meant only to humour the deception till she could obtain
Darnley ; as to Leicester's feelings upon the occasion, they are as inexplicable
as any other circumstances attending the negotiation, but we know from Sir
James Melvil, that he threw the blame upon Cecil, his " secret enemy," as he
called him ; but as this was notoriously said to excuse himself, through Melvil,
to the Queen of Scots, and knowing his power of dissimulation, we may well
question its truth ;* especially, as Cecil was at the very same time engaged in
* Melvil's account is as follows : — " The next day, my Lord of Leicester desired me to go
down the river in his barge with him to London, he had in his company Sir Henry Sidney,
deputy of Ireland ; by the way my Lord entered familiarly into discourse with me, alledging
that he was well acquainted with my Lord of Murray, Lidington, and my brother, Sir Robert ;
and that he was by report so well acquainted with me, that he durst upon the character he had
heard of me, desire to know what the Queen my mistress thought of him, and the marriage that
Mr. Randolph had proposed. Whereunto I answered very coldly, as I had been by my Queen
commanded. Then he began to purge himself of so proud a pretence, as to marry so great
a Queen, declaring he did not esteem himself worthy to wipe her shoes ; declaring that the
invention of that proposition of marriage proceeded from Mr. Cecil, his secret enemy. For if,
says he, I should have appeared desirous of that marriage, I should have offended both the
Queens, and lost their favour. He intreated me to excuse him at her Majesty's hands, and
to beg, in his name, that she would not impute that matter to him, but to the malice of his
enemies."
Now if this were all true, the scene described by Melvil in the following passage of his
Memoirs would afford a most curious subject for a painter. " She [Queen Elizabeth] took me
to her bedchamber, and opened a little cabinet wherein were divers little pictures wrapped
within paper, and their names written with her own hand upon the papers. Upon the first that
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 319
another negotiation for Elizabeth, in which Leicester had some concern, but in
regard to which, Elizabeth's real sentiments appear to have been impenetrable
to Cecil, as well as to others ; we allude to the business of the Archduke
Charles, mentioned above. It was not at all the character of Cecil to under-
mine his enemies, in the way Leicester would have insinuated; we have a
remarkable testimony to produce in his favour, which may well support him
against the calumnies of Leicester.
" The private character of Cecil," says the author of the Court of Elizabeth,
" was in every respect exemplary and truly amiable— he was honourably dis-
tinguished through life by an ardour and constancy of friendship rare in all
classes of men, but esteemed peculiarly so in those whose lives are occupied
amid the heartless ceremonials of Courts and the intrigues of Princes. His
attachments, as they never degenerated into the weakness of favouritism, were
as much a source of benefit to his country, as of enjoyment to himself: for his
friends were those of virtue and the state, and there were few among the more
estimable public men of this reign who were not indebted either for their first
introduction to Elizabeth, their continuance in her favour, or their restoration to
it when undeservedly lost, to the generous patronage or powerful intercession
of Cecil."*
When Elizabeth explained her intentions to Melvil as has been before shewn,
Leicester might probably be present, or at least must be supposed to have been
acquainted with her purposes, for Melvil thus Continues to give an account of
the whole scene : " And that the Queen my mistress might have the higher
esteem of him [Dudley] I was required to stay 'till I should see him made Earl
of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh, which was done at Westminster with great
solemnity.''!— The ceremony being over, " then she turned, asking of me, how
she took up was written, ' My Lord's picture,' I held the candle and pressed to see that picture
so named, she appeared loath to let me see it; yet my importunity prevailed for a sight thereof,
and I found it to be the Earl of Leicester's picture. I desired that I might have it to carry to"
my Queen, which she refused, alledging that she had but that one picture of his ; I said, your
Majesty hath here the original,/or I perceived him at the farthest part of the chamber, speaking with
Secretary Cecil."
* Aikin's Court of Elizabeth, i. 237.
f With the Barony of Denbigh he received great grants of lands there, and in the preceding
year, 1563, the Manor and Castle of Kenilworth had been bestowed on him in fee, the Patent
bearing date, Sept. 6, 1563, it had been long vested in the Crown. The charges of the improve-
ments he made in the Castle, Park, and Chase, are said to have amounted to 60.000/. an immense
320 MEMOIRS OF LORD B;URGHLEY. [1564.
I Jiked him?— I answered, that as he was a worthy servant, so he was happy
who had a Princess that could discern and reward good service. Yet, said she,
you like better of yonder long lad, pointing towards my Lord Darnley, who, as
nearest prince of the blood, did bear the sword of honour that day before her."*
By Melvil's own account, he was fully prepared to cheat and deceive Elizabeth
upon this occasion, and even as it would appear, instructed so to do. " My
answer was," says he, "that no woman of spirit would make choice of such a
man, who more resembled a woman than a man ; for he was handsome, beard-
less, and lady-faced.— I had no will," he adds, " that she should think that I
liked him, or had any eye or dealing that way. Albeit I had a secret charge
to deal with my Lady Lennox, to endeavour to procure liberty for him to go to
Scotland (where his father was already), under the pretext of seeing the coun-
try, and conveying the Earl his father back again to England."
It is seldom that those " privileged spies," ambassadors, let us so easily into
their secrets ; here Melvil acknowledges that he was practising deceit against
Elizabeth. We can find in our hearts to forgive him, if Elizabeth were really
seeking at the same time to deceive his mistress, Mary ; but it is well for the
purposes of our history, and the credit of Elizabeth and her great Minister Cecil,
to shew that deceitful practices were never wanting on Mary's part. She knew
the game she was playing, and though Elizabeth, by opening fresh negotiations
with Charles of Austria, on her own account, and making a show of surrendering
Leicester to her, might reasonably enough awaken her resentment,^ yet it was
sum in those days. It is rather remarkable, that in the account preserved of the ceremony,
though the presence of the French Ambassador is mentioned, there is nothing said of Melvil
nor of Lord Darnley. — See Strypcs Annals.
* These honours conferred so rapidly upon Leicester, can scarcely have been the work of
Cecil, and as they were so pointedly connected with the offer of his person to Mary, would seem
to clear the Secretary of Leicester's imputations. We are inclined to think Leicester was at the
bottom of all, and the only person really acquainted with Elizabeth's views and designs; we
have shewn what she acknowledged to Mehil of those views and designs, and it is not impossible
that Leicester might look to the having both Queens wholly under his influence.
t If Elizabeth had really designed to marry the Archduke, there was nothing so very treacherous
in her taking this opportunity of reviving the negotiation, since we know, from Maximilian's own
conduct, that he was afraid of his brother's marrying Mary, for fear of his invading the Nether-
lands, when he should have become by that marriage King of England. Surely if he looked to
have England, Elizabeth might as well confer it upon him by marrying him herself, as allow Mary
to do so. The Guises appear constantly to have offered England, when they offered Mary ; as in
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 321
no bad policy in her to catch at Darnley ; and it is extremely probable that, in
doing so, she was acting still under the advice of her relatives in France, and
with the consent of all the Catholic party. In the whole of this negotiation, we
are disposed to think, that those most accused of deception, and not perhaps
without reason, were the persons most deceived in the end — we mean Elizabeth,
Cecil, Leicester, and even Murray and Lethington. Whatever Elizabeth's design
might be in proposing Leicester, Mary certainly entertained the offer, until, as
it is supposed, she excited some alarm in the breast of Elizabeth, that her rival
was about to supplant her in the affections of her minion, for so we must call
him. If Elizabeth did at any time really propose to act upon the principle she
avowed to Melvil, of marrying Mary (as heir apparent) to a husband who would
not disturb her own reign, Mary seems to have been playing a different card, by
inviting Lennox to return, with a view, in all likelihood, to get Darnley to Scotland
also. Cecil, Murray, and Maitland (Lethington), in the mean while, were
induced to favour Lennox's return, the two latter especially, as supposing him to
be a good counterpoise to the Hamiltons, who were become objects of suspicion
to the reformed party; while in fact it is extremely probable that the whole was
a concerted scheme of the House of Guise, to get into their power the nearest
Prince of the blood, as Melvil calls Darnley, that he might not be set up against
Mary, or intercept her views, upon the English crown. We are also disposed to
think that Elizabeth, in proposing Leicester, might have in view the checking or
suppressing of some rude speeches current against her reputation, on the score
of her marked attentions to him ; and in this perhaps Cecil may have concurred,*
since it is a remarkable fact, that only twenty-two days before Dudley was made
Earl of Leicester, in the presence of Melvil (to give him a higher rank as Mary's
suitor), Cecil wrote, by the Queen's command, a letter to her agent in Germany,
Mundt, who was negotiating the match with Charles of Austria, to assure him
that Elizabeth only regarded Leicester for his merits, without any design of
marrying him, or inclination of that sort. That these were precisely Cecil's own
the case of the King of Navarre, the Archduke Charles, and the Prince of Conde : nor should the
' arbitrary manner in which they were accustomed to propose the hand of their niece to foreign
Princes be overlooked ; she was regularly offered as the price of some new alliance, and the
prospect of her inheriting or conquering England generally thrown into the scale.
• In a very curious paper drawn up in 1566, and of which we shall have to speak, marked in
Haynes as from a minute by Secretary Cecil, among the reasons against the Queen's marrying
Leicester, the second is, " It will be thought that the slanderous speeches of the Queen with the
Earl have been true."
VOL. II. 2 T
322 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
sentiments we cannot pretend to say ; he seems not to have been quite willing
to make himself responsible for them, the letter being carefully marked, as written
by command, " Jussu Regince" and a desire expressed in a postscript to have it
returned. " Quteso ut has ipsas ad me literas tuto remittas, itaque fades ran
pergratam." This letter is dated September 8, 1564, and on September 29, in
the same year, we learn from Lord Burghley's own notes, that the Lord Robert
(as he was commonly called) was made Earl of Leicester at Westminster, in the
manner so curiously described by Melvil. [See his Memoirs, p. 94.]
As our own interpretation of this extraordinary transaction has been chiefly
drawn from Lord Burghley's own notes, compared with his letters published
by Haynes, from the Salisbury papers, we shall, for the sake of the dates,
transcribe such as apply to this particular subject, as they stand in order in the
originals.
1564— Anno Vlto. Eliz. :-
" June 4. The Scots Queen refused to meet with the Q. Majesty in Eng-
land, except she might be by the Parliament stablished heir apparent, or adopted
daughter to the Q. Majesty.*
"June 20. Mr. Randolph came from Scotland.
"July 5. The Q. Majesty being at Mr. Sackvile's, wrote to the Q. of Scots
to stay the going to Scotland of the Earl of Lenox. -\
"July 13. The Earl Murray writeth that he would not have the Lord of
Lenox coming stayed ;J and Ledyngton writeth, that the Earl of Murray and
he have been furderers of his home coming."
* There is a duplicate of this note, as of many others, to the following effect :
"June 4. The Queen of Scotts with excuses, refused to meet with the Q. Majesty.
t The two following notes relate to his family, but, considering what was passing, they are too
curious to be omitted :
"Julyl, 1564. My daughter Elizabeth (afterwards Countess of Derby) born at Cecill
House at night betwixt seven and eight."
" July 6. My daughter Elizabeth christened by the Q. Majesty and Lady Lenox, [i. e. a*
Sponsors], The same night the Queen supped at my house."
It is strange to read these accounts, and consider the terms upon which Elizabeth and Lady
Lennox, and we may add, Cecil stood, with regard to the affairs of Scotland.— Lady Lennox only
two years before [1562] had been in custody for holding a secret correspondence with Mary
Queen of Scots, and she was at this very time, probably, guilty of a like offence.
t Before the union of the crowns, no subject of one kingdom could pass into the other without
the permission of both Sovereigns.
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 323
Here things seem to have been pretty much at a stay till September, the
Queen in the interim having paid her visit to Cambridge, as will be shewn
hereafter.
"Sept. 18. L. Ledyngton mislyketh that any fault should be found with
the E. of Lenox home coming.
" Sept. 27. The Earl of Lenox arrived at Edinburgh.*
" Sept. 28. The Queen of Scots by her letters promiseth to restore the Earl
of Lenox to his possessions.
" Sept. 29. Lord Robert Dudley made Earl of Leicester.
Mr. Melvyn was sent with Letters from the Q. of Scots to the
Q. Majesty.
" Oct. 7. Mr. Randolph departed towards Scotland with charge to find lack
in the Q. of Scots for not answering of her Letters.
" Oct. 24. Mr. Rand, writeth how he has spoken with the Q. of Scots in the
matter of her marriage.
" Nov. 3. Ran. writeth that the Queen is content to appoint the Earl Murray
and Leddyngton to come to Barwick to join and confer with the Earl of
Bedford.
"Nov. 7. Randolph persuadeth a great likelihood of good-will in the
Queen of Scots to my Lord Robert.
"Nov. 12. My Lord Darnlies going denied by the Queen. Randolph
came to Barwick.
"Nov. 18. t Earl Murray [and] Lord Lyddington came to Barwyk, and
there treated for the marriage of their Queen, where they desired to know what
advancement should be made with the Earl of Leicester, and being but answered
generally they could not allow.J
" Nov. 23. They end the Treaty, and the two lords of Scotland promise to
make report to the Queen.
"Dec. 2. The Queen of Scots offereth to be wholly directed in marriage by
the Erl Murray and Lord Lyddyngton.
* Duplicate to the same effect.
f " Anno 7m° Eliz. the 7th year. From Nov. 17, 1564, to Nov. 16, 1565."
I Duplicate. " Anno 7mo Nov. 18. Earl of Murray and Lyddyngton came to Barwyk, there
treated with the Earl of Bedford and Mr. Randolph.
" Nov. 27. The Earl of Lenox being in Scotland with the Queen's licence, made suit to have
his son the Lord Darnley to come thither to him in Scotland."
324 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
"Dec. 3. The Erl Murray and Lyddington write to W. Cecill, that they
would gladly know, whether the Q. Majesty meaneth the marriage of the Erl
of Leicester with the Queen their Sovereign, so as her honour and surety be
provided for. Earl of Lenox restored by Parliament.*
"Dec. 14. A report made by the Earl of Lenox, that he hoped his son
should marry the Queen.
" Dec. 16. I, W. Cecill, wrote by the Queen's commandment to the Earl
Murray and Lord of Lyddyngton, about this time the Queen was sick at
Westminster.
"Dec. 24. It appeareth that the Queen of Scotsf would have her title de-
clared and established by Parliament.
" January 11. [1564-5]. I, W. Cecill, by the Queen's commandment wrote
to the Earl Murray and Lyddyngton, that the Queen my Sovereign was first
provoked to give advice in the marriage, and secondly, to offer privately her
friendship. — I was motioned by Mr. Randolph to go to Berwick to confer with
the Lords.
" Feb. 5. J Mr. Randolph writeth at length of the Q. of Scots allowance
of my Lord of Leicester ; and giveth great appearance of success in the
marriage.§
"Feb. 13. Lord Darnley arrived at Edinburgh.
" — — 16. He came to the Queen.
"March 4. Randolph writeth that the Queen of Scots requireth to be heir
apparent of England.
" March 5. The Queen's Majesty writeth to Mr. Randolph to offer to the
Queen of Scots all gentleness, &c. but not to meddle with her title 'till she shall
be married herself, or shall determine not to marry.
" March 14. Mr. Randolph writeth that the Queen's desire is, to be either
* " Dec. 9. The Q. Majesty sore sick."
t This deserves attention, as another instance of the imprudent (not to say indelicate and
unfeeling) advantage Mary was disposed to take of any illness affecting Elizabeth.
t " Nota, a noyse of armed men heard in thg streets of Edinburgh in the night without seeing
any person." [This was consistent with the superstition of those days, from which Lord Burghley
was certainly not entirely free.]
§ Duplicate. " Feb. .5. Mr. Randolph writ from Scotland of the Queen of Scots inclination to
marry with the Earl of Leicester."
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 325
heir apparent, daughter adopted, or sister to the Queen of England.* — He
noteth in the Queen of Scotts marvellous love to the Q. Majesty.
"March 15. Earl Bothwell returned into Scotland. The Lord Darnley is
favoured of the Queen and much doubted therein.
" March 20. Lykhood that the Q. of Scotts will marry the Lord Darnley."
Hitherto it is decidedly our opinion, that a considerable deception was prac-
tising against Elizabeth, if not also against Murray and Lethington, who could
not possibly have wished Mary to marry a youth of eighteen, and if not a decided
Catholic, as some say, by no means friendly to the Protestants, nor likely
therefore to be favourable to Murray, though in all likelihood the latter may
have been led to promote the return of Lennox, as a counterpoise to the Duke of
Chatelherault, who was become an object of suspicion. But we shall continue
our selection from Cecil's own notes, to the Queen's marriage with Darnley,
which took place July 29, 1 565.
" Ultimo March. The Earl Bothwel licensed to depart by England into
France.
" April 7. Earl of Murray departed from the Court [of Scotland]. Lord of
Lyddington in some readiness to come hither. Lord Darnley sick of the
measles at Stirling.
" April 15. Plainly discovered "j" that the Queen will have the Lord Darnley.
Lord of Leddyngton at Barwick.
" April 30. Lyddington came to England to motion the Queen's allowance
for the Lord Darnly's marriage.
* "Dec. 16, 1564. Wrote to Murray and Maitland that if she married Leicester she should
be declared heir apparent after Elizabeth herself should be married."
t The words "plainly discovered" may refer to the fact of Randolph's having been deceived by
Mary's good management ; his letters to the Court at this period, as Robertson observes, shewing
that the intrigue between Mary and Darnley had eluded his discovery and observation, and that
he did not know it, till Mary had actually dispatched Maitland, as Lord Burghley's duplicate
states it, " to motion the Queen's allowance for the marriage." — See Robertson, i. 194. b. iii.
anno 1565. But it is rather difficult to reconcile his ignorance in April, of what Cecil seems
to have known in March, namely, of the "likelihood of the Queen's marrying Darnley," see
his notes, March 15 and 20; nor does it seem to agree with Mary's sudden attachment to
Darnley, which Robertson believes and relates ; though he admits that there was no small degree
of spite to Elizabeth, and resentment, in the haste she manifested to conclude the marriage.
Mademoiselle de Keralio, who thinks Randolph was deceived, or at least puzzled, as to the inten-
tions of both Queens respecting Leicester, says, " D'ailleurs la conduite de Marie prouve incon-
326 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1664.
" April 23. A consultation was had here upon the Lord of Lyddington's
coming hither.
" April 24. Sir Nicholas Throgmorton* sent to Scotland to labour the disso-
lution of the intended marriage with Lord Darly, [MS.] and to prefer the
marriage with the Earl of Leicester."
We cannot avoid making a pause here, to throw in one observation. Sir
Nicholas Throckmorton was no friend to Cecil, but a creature of Lord Leicester's,
and yet here we find him deputed to press the marriage with Leicester, which
the latter had told Melvil was merely a plan of Cecil's (his secret enemy), to
ruin him.
" May 1. A consultation to disprove the intended marriage between the
Queen of Scotts and Lord Barley, and an offer to marry any other nobleman
in the realm.f
" May 3. Erie Murray and Argile at Edinburgh to keep the Law-day
against Bothwell. The Queen hateth the Duke ; the Erie of Argyle, the Erie
of Murray alledging against him, that he goeth about to set the crown upon
his own head.
" May 6. Lyddington in England, ambassador for the Scotts Queen, to
obteyn the Queen's good-will for the Lord Darnley's marriage, at which time
he treated of the Earl of Leicester's marriage ; but he lyked it not, but moved for
the Duke of Norfolk, which he then refused. This shews that Maitland himself
did not wish Mary to many Darnley, though sent to propose it — 'See before.
" May 21. Lord Darly made Knight, Barort, and Erie, by the Queen of Scotts.
" June 4. A general consultation and advice given by the privy Counsell in
the matter of Scotland.
" June 18. Erie Lenox and Lord Darnley revoked, according to the treaties.
testablement qu' elle ne fut pas un instant abusee par les offres de la Reine d' Angleterre. Avant
les conference* de Barwick, elle se disposoit, a faire negocier en France et a Rome les dispenses
du pape et le consenU-.ment de son beau frcre, relativement i my lord Darnley;" and she enters
into the comparison of dates to prove this. — -Tom. ii. 284, note.
* Duplicate. " April 24. Instructions for Sir Nicholas Throgmorton in two points. The one
to procure a dissolution or stay of the marriage with the Lord Darnley. 2dly, to procure that the
Queen of Scots would marry with the Earl ofLeicester, or some other ; and if he find it so far
passed as it cannot be revoked, then he shall not use any other speech, but to declare how much
it shall discontent her Majesty."
t Duplicate. " Primo May. A determination signed" by the Council, to shew their opinion
against the marriage."
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. .327
" July 2. Erie Lenox and Lord Darnley * refuse to return, Lord Darnley
avowing his service to the Queen of Scotts above all others. Appeareth that
the Erie of Murray refused to come home because he was threatened to be
murdered.
" July 7. A Rumour spread that the Queen of Scotts should be taken by the
Lords Argile and Murray. Great comfort, that the Earl of Lenox and his Sons
shall not prosper, &c.
" July 10. The Queen Majesty sent a message to the Queen of Scotts of
advice to regard her good subjects with more favour, and of good Counsell to
the Lords.
" July 20. The Erie of Bedford arrived at Barwyk ; the Scotts Queen
offended with the earl of Murray.
" July 21. A proud answer of the Lord Darnley.
" July 29. Lord Darnley married to the Scotts Queen.f he being made
Duke of Albany, Earl of Ross in May.
" July 30. Lord Darnley proclaimed KING.
" The Erie of Murray advised not to come to the Queen."
The above are the very notes and memorandums of Lord Burghley himself,
of the proceedings with Scotland, from June 4, 1564, to July 30, 1565.
That Lord Darnley was Mary's choice there can be no doubt, but that she
was enamoured with him at first sight, and fascinated with his merely personal
appearance, we much question ; she had probably higher objects in view,
and had Darnley proved deserving of the preference shewn him, it would seem
from the foregoing memorandums alone, that when she had accomplished the
marriage, she had achieved a triumph in state policy over almost all the other
parties. Melvil, who pretends to have been more in the secret than was probably
altogether the case, after telling us that Cecil and Leicester, my Lord of Murray
and Secretary Lethington, ruled both Queens, and as yet kept good correspon-
dence together, undertakes to inform us plainly of Cecil's intentions in this very
curious business. After noticing a very remarkable fact, if it were true, namely,
that when the Commissioners at Berwick had treated again of the marriage with
Leicester "with slenderer offers, that is, on the part of Elizabeth, and less effec-
tual dealing than was expected," Leicester himself wrote " such discreet and
• Duplicate. "The Erie of Lenox and Lord Darley refuse to return."
t Cecil had been informed that they were married privately three weeks before,
viz. on the 9th of July.— See Keith,
328 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
wise letters to my Lord of Murray for his excuses, that the Queen [of Scots]
appeared to have so good liking to him, as the Queen of England began to
suspect the said marriage might take effect," and then he adds, " her apprehen-
sion of this occasioned the Lord Darnley's getting more ready license to come to
Scotland, in hope that he, being a handsome lusty youth, should rather prevail,
being present, than Leicester who was absent. Which license was procured by
the means of the Secretary Cecil, not that he was minded that any of the mar-
riages should take effect, but with such shifts to hold the Queen unmarried so
long as he could. For he persuaded himself, that my Lord Darnley durst not
proceed in the marriage, without consent of the Queen of England first
obtained to the said marriage ; his land lying in England, and his mother
remaining there : so that he thought it lay in the Queen his mistress her own
hand, to let that marriage go forward, or to stay the same at her pleasure.
And in case my Lord Darnley should disobey the Queen of England's
command to return upon her call, he intended to cause forfault him, whereby
he should lose all his lands, rights, and titles, in England."
If this were all true, and what Elizabeth told Melvil might in some sort
tend to confirm it, namely, that Mary should be induced to marry, not only
" within the isle," but a person upon whom Elizabeth might have some hold,
that in virtue of Mary's claim to the English crown, there should be no usurpa-
tion of the same before her death ; then, I say, it is obvious that Mary outwitted
the whole party, and with extraordinary good management, but a bold spirit,*
baffled all the designs of Elizabeth, Cecil, Murray, and Maitland."}' Instead of
allowing herself to be intimidated by the intimations she received from Eliza-
beth, that she might oflend the English party and defeat her claims, she
increased her own title to the English throne, by adding to it that of Darnley
(which might otherwise have been turned against her) ;J she taught him and
Lennox to defy§ the authority of Elizabeth ; she revived the Scotch claims of
* Chalmers's statement agrees so much with this, that we cannot help transcribing it: " With
all their sagacity they were imposed upon, by the artful blandishments of the Scottish Queen,
who, under gentleness, and facility, and playfulness, concealed acntenessvf understanding, sincerity
of purpose, a spirit to oppose difficulties, and a resolution to surmount danger." — Vol. i. 128, 9.
•f Even Randolph may be added. — See Keith and Robertson.
t See Darnley's title. — Robertson, i. 186, 7. His being a regular born English subject gave
him a claim by law, which Mary wanted.
§ Darnley's answer to Randolph, when recalled by Elizabeth, was as follows : " Since the Queen,
your mistress, is so envious of my fortune, as to oppose it by all her instruments here, I nothing
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 329
» ^ . t • *. • \
Lennox, in opposition to the House of Hamilton, to keep the latter at a distance ;
she restored their possessions,* to render them independent of England ; with a
reserve to such claims as might alienate the Douglases; and she obtained a
husband of her own race, who, besides his youth and comeliness, had royal
blood enough in his veins to take the place of her illegitimate brother, Murray ;
who is said to have recommended to her, to regard the Stuarts [meaning
himself] in the transmission of the crown ;f — a Stuart she chose, indeed, but to
his great disappointment.
But all this will appear the more plain, if it be true, as some authors have
positively asserted, that the Cardinal of Lorrain was at the bottom of the whole
proceedings on Mary's part. That it was he,^. who first suggested the return
of Lennox ; he who counselled or encouraged his niece to take Darnley, for fear
Elizabeth should be induced to set him up in opposition to Mary,\ as successor
to the throne of England,|| and to thwart Murray in his anxiety about the
doubt, but time may come she may have need of me ; and therefore return this answer to her,
that I mind not to return : for I find myself well here." — Strype's Annals, ch. xlvii. When
Throckmorton intimated to them some months before, Elizabeth's will that they should return,
Robertson says, they both wrote submissively to the Queen ; Darnley's answer by Randolph
was only nine days before his marriage : viz. July 20.
* See Robertson, i. 189.
t It may be added, that while she made a mockery of Elizabeth, by alleging that she had only
followed her advice in choosing an Englishman in preference to a foreigner \Camdeii\, — she left
Leicester just as he was, without falling into any snare which either Elizabeth or Cecil had, ac-
cording to report, projected, in offering him to her choice.
I See Goodall, i. 199. — a curious authority to cite upon this occasion. Mad"e. de Kcralio depends
upon him, as a sufficient authority to prove that Murray sought the crown — perhaps he might do
so, in reversion ; but if he did, the Lorrainers and Mary were too subtle for him, by Goodall's own
account.
§ See the grounds upon which the French Court approved the match, as soon as it had taken
place. [Robertson, i. 192.]
|| It is scarcely to be doubted that the Cardinal, and the Catholics in general, approved all that
Mary was doing, since her marriage with Darnley being within the prohibited degrees of consan-
guinity, required a dispensation from the Pope, which was no sooner asked for than it was
granted. As soon as ever she received this instrument she was married to him with much so-
lemnity in Holyrood Chapel, the Dean of Resthalrig performing the ceremony ; the discontented
Lords, in the mean while, declaring against the marriage, but to no purpose.
They sent up a memorial, however, to Leicester and Cecil, requiring them to look narrowy to
the Lady Lennox, and take care that she should be debarred from all communications with the
French and Spanish ambassadors. But they had had for some time another envoy at hand, the
VOL. II. 2 U
330 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
Stuarts, who had indeed thrown no obstacle in the way of Lennox's return, see-
ing it would of course embarrass his great competitors, the Hamiltons. And yet
Elizabeth and Cecil have had the blame of contriving to send back Lennox for
the mere purpose of creating disturbances in Mary's kingdom ; whereas, Eliza-
beth actually forewarned Mary, when she gave Lennox permission to return, that
it was likely to be attended with a revival of all the animosities between the
Houses of Hamilton and Lennox ; a hint with which Mary was much offended.*
And to shew how very artfully she managed matters, at the very moment when
Lennox and Lady Lennox were soliciting Elizabeth's permission for Darnley to
go to his father, in Scotland, and when she had even persuaded Murray and
Maitland to take part in promoting the return of that family, and the restoration
of their possessions ; she made such a show of being inclined to conclude with
Leicester, that Elizabeth became alarmed, and thus Darnley was enabledf to
escape from England ; to the great joy of his father and mother, who were ear-
nestly bent upon making him a king.
Unfortunately for Mary, she could scarcely have made a worse choice, as
regarded her own happiness and independence. It was very soon discovered,
famous Rizzio, of whom we shall have more to say hereafter. He was confidently believed to be
a pensioner of the Pope, amply instructed to overset the Reformation ; certain it is, that as he came
into favour, Murray lost the confidence of the Queen, his sister, and that he was an adviser of the
marriage with Darnley may be easily concluded, from their extreme intimacy on the return of the
latter to Scotland, which went so far as to render them partners of the same bed. [RapinJ] To
increase the alarm of Murray, Mary recalled some of his greatest enemies, particularly Bothwell,
against whom Murray had instituted a charge of intended murder.
* She made a very angry reply, so as for some time to occasion an interruption of all corre-
spondence between her and Elizabeth. [Robertson.] Melvil was sent to reconcile matters. Eliza-
beth saw reason to be soon pacified, and, to end the quarrel, tore Mary's angry letter to pieces
before the Ambassador, professing great love for her, which Melvil, on Mary's part, returned.
" But," says Robertson, " what Melvil truly observes with respect to Elizabeth, may be extended
without injustice to both Queens ; there was neither plain dealing, nor upright meaning, but
great dissimulation, envy, and fear."
t Though it is generally thought that Elizabeth sent Lord Darnley to Scotland in haste, upon
being told that Mary shewed some inclination to accept of Leicester, yet the following entries in
Lord Burghley's Diary, in immediate succession the one to the other, would seem to bespeak the
contrary.
" 1564. Nov. 7. Randolph persuadeth a great lykhood of good-will in the Queen of Scotts to
my Lord Robert.
" Nov. 12. My Lord Darnlye's going denied by the Quene."
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 331
that, besides his extreme youth, Darnley was of a temper and disposition too
uncontrollable ; and of a judgment too weak to be trusted with the government
of the kingdom if it could possibly be prevented. How the party most exposed
to danger sought to prevent it, is another question. But though Randolph *
(another of the English disturbers,^ as he is generally called by Mary's advocates)
was manifestly on the side of the reformed party, he seems to have had no more
to do than observe and report upon the course of events, disturbed enough
certainly, but not through the immediate influence of Elizabeth or Cecil. Had
the latter quite abandoned the reformed party, they would evidently have been
playing into the hands of the adversaries of England, and raised the hopes of
all the Catholics at home, just as ripe for revolt against Elizabeth, upon sufficient
encouragement from France, Scotland, and Rome (always ready to support every
opposition to the progress of the Reformation), as any of Mary's subjects could
be, to resent the course she was about to take to the probable ruin of herself
and country.
Mary had succeeded in obtaining Darnley, but she had matched herself with
an angry and impetuous youth, likely to widen every breach, and disgust every
truly wise counsellor she had about her. But she carried herself very high upon
all occasions, as we may judge from the following note of Lord Burghley.
"August 10, (eleven days only after her marriage.) Mr. Tamworth sent to
the Queen of Scotts, and refused to be heard, but by writing he received answer,
* See what Tytler says of Randolph in his Inquiry, vol. ii. p. 8.
t It betrays great ignorance of the political state of Europe in the sixteenth century, to insist
so much as some do upon the disposition of Elizabeth and Cecil to disturb other countries, for the
greater security of England, as though it were a practice at all peculiar to them. The following
passage alone, from Daniel's History of France, may serve to shew how many other disturbers
of the repose of Christendom there were in the world at this very period of time. Speaking of
the general disposition in France and elsewhere to suppress the Hugonots (under the year 1564),
he says, "The King of Spain was apprehensive lest the Hugonotsof France, if let alone, should
support those of the Low Countries, who began to revolt in several places. Besides he thought
it of considerable advantage to his states, that France should not enjoy too great a tranquillity.
The Emperor, who had lately renewed his instances for the restitution of Metz, Toul, and Vtrdun,
looked upon a civil war in France as a means to arrive at this end ; while the Duke of Savoy was
in hopes, by the same methods, to recover with more ease the towns which the French still kept
possession of in Piedmont," &c. Rapin, considering the state of things on Mary's marriage, and
the cabals against England consequent thereto, adds, " It will not appear strange that Elizabeth
fomented the troubles in Scotland, to put it out of the power of her enemies to invade her."
332 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
y | '
which were offers to live in peace with the Queen of England, so as she might
be declared heir to the Queen's Majesty, and the Lady Lennox next to her.
Which offers Tamworth refused to accept, and afterward Tamworth was stayed
at Dunbar, and carried to Hume Castle."*
Tamworth was a gentleman of the privy-chamber, and he carried with him,
it is said, a letter from Elizabeth in her own hand, demanding that Darnley, to
whom she gave the title of K'mg,\ should be delivered up to her, according to
the tenor of the treaty on foot between them. Mary had reason perhaps to
resent such a demand ; but her own demand was, as she must have known,
quite as repugnant to the feelings of Elizabeth, especially in taking the
opportunity at such a moment of introducing the claim of the Lady Lennox.
But we are farther told, that when Mary refused to give Tamworth an audience;
she consented to receive the letter, and whilst she was reading it in the presence
of some Lords, Rizzio came in, and snatching it out of her hands, hindered her
proceeding. He judged that Elizabeth demanded the King, only to oblige
the Queen to pardon the exiles, to which he could not agree, being determined
to ruin them, though Murray had sent him a submissive letter with a fine
diamond inclosed. Mary answered Elizabeth that she would not attempt any
thing against England so long as she lived, provided she was declared her
presumptive heir by act of Parliament. As to the fugitive Lords, she desired
Elizabeth to leave her at liberty to dispose of them as she pleased, since she did
not meddle with what passed in England. — History of the Life and Reign of
Queen Elizabeth. In the meantime letters appear to have been intercepted from
* Mr. Lodge says, in a note to a letter implying the contrary from Lord Bedford, vol. i. p. 35.3,
that he has not found any account of Tamworth's detention in Scotland, in any history. The
above is copied from Lord Burghley's Diary— but it would seem that he brought back the message
above. See p. 759, Diary.
f " To whom she vouchsafed to give the title of King." — Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth after
Rapin. Yet Camden, speaking of Tamworth's rude behaviour towards Mary, gives it as an
instance, that " he vouchsafed not her husband the title of King." This difference between
Elizabeth and her Minister, if both accounts be true, it would seem difficult to reconcile ; but, as
Camden says, " he received entertainment below his worth, as he thought," perhaps it proceeded
from private pique and resentment. But it may be doubted, whether Elizabeth ever gave Darnley
the title of King. Mad"", de Keralio insists upon it, that Elizabeth's directions to her Minister
not to give Darnley the title of King, was the cause of the neglect shewn him at the Prince's
christening, of which we shall have to speak, but we doubt the instructions; and at all events he
received worse treatment from the French than from the English Minister.
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 333
Sir Francis Englefield, from Lorrain, " wherein he commendeth his duty to the
Scotts Queen." As a natural born subject of England, his duty was owing
elsewhere ; but it was well known to be alienated, by his Popish connexions
and attachments.
" September 5. (Lord Burghley's notes proceed :) The Lords of Scotland, viz.
the Duke, Earl of Murray, &c. came to Dumfrees.
" September 24, a consultation at Windsor, whether the Lords of Scotland,
being expelled by the Scotts Queen, should be aided.
" October 10, I was sent to Nonsuch to confer with the Earl of Arundell con-
cerning the proceeding against the Queen of Scotts."
Here end all the notes respecting Scotland to the termination of the year 1565,
according to the present or historical reckoning ; being less than two months
beyond the seventh year of the Queen's reign.
It is now time to bring the other transactions, in which Lord Burghley bore
quite as great a share, to the same period. — We shall begin with those relating
to the Continent.
Newhaven, or Havre-de-Grace, was surrendered, as we have shewn,* on the
28th of July, 1563. On the 2d August (to follow Lord Burghley's notes) the
plague began in London, brought thither by the troops returned from Normandy.
On the 27th of October, a commission was sent over to Sir Nicholas Throck-
morton and Sir Thomas Smith, to treat for peace; and on the llth of April,
1564, a treaty was concluded at Troyes in Champagne ; on the 23d the French
hostages were set at liberty; and on the 29th the peace ratified by the Queen,
and delivered to the French Ambassador by Sir William Cecil and Dr. Wotton.
It was confirmed on the first of May by the French King, and on the 28th, Lord
Hunsdon, the Queen's cousin, f was sent to France, to invest Charles IX. with
the Order of the Garter ; which ceremony took place on the 24th of June ; on
the 25th the Emperor Ferdinand died. The disputes between the Catholics
and Protestants in France, during the years 1564, 1565, were rather smothered
for a time than extinguished, while in the Netherlands the Duchess of Parma,
who had been appointed Governess by Philip, with the Cardinal Granvelle for
* Leicester endeavoured to throw all the blame of this unsuccessful expedition on Cecil, but
was well and coolly answered by the Queen, in the following terms: " The Secretary has done
his duty, but neither he nor I can command events."
f " Cujus fuerat matertera pulchra,
Reginse genetrix Henrici nobilis Uxor."
334 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
her Minister, in her resentment of the spread of Protestantism, in the Low
Countries, imprudently allowed her prejudices to operate to the disturbance of
the commerce between the States and England : fortunately in the room of that
great disturber, the Bishop of Aquila, Philip had lately sent as his Minister to
the Court of Elizabeth, Don Diego de Gusman, a prudent and wise man, who
seeing how hurtful these differences might prove in the end, to the Nether-
landers, carefully sought to compound matters, though things do not appear
to have been brought to a good conclusion, according to Lord Burghley's notes,
before the 18th of December, 1564 ; when we read, that "an accord was made
between the Queen Majesty and the Duchess of Parma for continuing of the
intercourse* or ' Great Intercourse,' as it was called, made in the time of Maxi-
milian, with other articles delivered ;" and on the 29th of the same month, a
Proclamation was issued to give effect to the same. In the month of May,
1565, " a motion was made in France for a marriage between Charles IX. the
French King, and the Queen's Majesty ;" and in the month of June following,
an Ambassador arrived from the new Emperor, Maximilian, " to move a mar-
riage with the Archduke Charles his brother." — [Lord Burghley's notes.]^
We shall now turn to the state of things at home. In Lord Burghley's notes
are some memorandums relating to his family concerns which should of course
not be passed over ; we have noticed the birth of his daughter Elizabeth (after-
wards Countess of Derby), which happened on the 1st of July, 1564 ; on Easter
day of that year, viz. April 2, the following note occurs.
' H. Killegrew wrote to me an invective for my mislikingj of his marriage
* Cardinal Granvelle's policy had been to get the English out of the country, before a war
should be kindled in the Netherlands, which he had every reason to foresee and expect; on the
prohibition to import English cloths, the English set up a Staple at Embden, in East Friesland.
The wise advice of Gusman brought them back. Camden tells us, that in his time the commerce
between England and the Netherlands, rose yearly to above twelve millions of gold, and that the
woollen trade alone, amounted to above five millions.
•r On the death of Ferdinand, the Secretary had nearly been sent on an embassy to the new
Emperor, but got himself excused, on the score of ill health and pressure of public business at
home. — Strypes Annals, i. ch. xl. 1564.
Obsequies were solemnized for the Emperor at London, September 23, 1564, Sir William
being one of the principal mourners. — Ib.
I It is probab . , that in many ponts, Cecil and Killegrew must have been so much of the same
disposition and character as to have been excellent friends. Lloyd's account of Killegrew's
studies is singular enough. " From Tully (whose orations he could repeat to his dying day)
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 335
with my sister, Catharyn Cook." What objections Sir William had to this
marriage, does not appear ; but it is probable, they were soon over-ruled, since
the marriage took place, and Mr. Killegrew (afterwards Sir Henry), being a
man of good abilities, is known to have served the Queen with much credit in
several embassies ; and to have lived in great esteem till the beginning of the
following century, 1602.§
he gained an even and apt style, flowing at one and the self-same height. Tully's Offices, a book
which boys read, and men understand, was so esteemed of my Lord Burgkley, that to his dying
day, he always carried it about him, either in his bosom, or his pocket, as a compleat piece, that,
like Aristotle's Rhetorick, would make both a scholar and an honest man." — He then enumerates
in his odd way, the authors Killegrew delighted in, as Cicero, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Curtius,
Sallust, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, and " sweet Plutarch, whose books (said
Gaza) would furnish the world, were all others lost;" and adds, after Diodorus Siculus, " here
he sat on the stage of human life, observing the great circumstances of places, persons, times,
manners, occasions, &c., and was made wise by their example who have trod the path of error
and danger before him."
* Lady Killegrew appears to have been in no degree inferior to her sisters, in point either of
natural abilities or acquired talents. We have two pieces of poetry of hers inserted in the
Biographia Britannica, which deserve a place here. One, indeed, is her own epitaph in Latin ;
many others are said to have been composed for her, one in Greek and Latin, by her sister Lady
Russel, and three Latin ones, by Robert Forman, of the Reformed French Church, Andrew
Melvin, and William Chark ; her own is as follows ;
Dormio nunc Domino, Domini virtute resurgam.
Et Iwri/pa ineum came videbo mea.
Mortua ne dicar, fruitur pars altera Christo ;
Et surgam capiti, tempore, tota meo.
The other is elegantly sentimental, and happens to be addressed to her sister, Lady Cecil, to
procure her interest to stay the embassy beyond sea, some say of a lover, but most likely of her
husband, Sir Henry, and cause him to be sent back to her in Cornwall.
Si mihi quern cupio curas MILDBEDA remitti,
Tu bona, tu melior, tu mihi sola soror :
Sin male cessando retines, et trans mare mittis,
Tu mala, tu pejor, tu mihi nulla soror.
Is si cornubiam, tibi pax sit et omnia laeta;
Sin mare, CICILI.S nuncio bella — vale!
They have been well translated,
If, Mildred, to my wishes kind,
Thy valued charge thou send,
In thee my soul shall own combined
The sister and the friend,
336 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
' On the 2 1st of August, 1564, we have the following entry, in Lord Burghley's
diary : " At Bever to see my Lord Latymer's daughter for my son ;" and on the
27th of November, in the same year, " My son Thomas Cecill (afterwards first
Earl of Exeter) married at Moncton in Yorkshire." The Lady whom Mr. Cecil
married was one of the coheirs of Nevil, Lord Latimer; he had a large family
by her, as many as five sons and eight daughters, of whom we shall have more
to say hereafter. William, his eldest son, named, probably, after his grand-
father, and who succeeded him in his titles and estates, was born in 1 566.*
In the autumn of the year 1565, the Secretary lost one of his earliest and
most particular friends; thus noticed by himself as an occurrence of that year.
" Oct. 14. — Sir Thomas Challoner died, and was buried in Paul's church,
where Sir William Cecil was chief mourner." Sir Thomas was a gallant sol-
dier, and, like Sir William himself, an able statesman, he was also a poet ; in
point of years he was senior to Sir William, having been born in 1515, he was
bred at the same University of Cambridge, and sent abroad, according to the
custom of those days, by Henry VIII. and chiefly at his expense : becoming
known to Charles V., and an admirer of his achievements, he was induced to
accompany that monarch upon his famous expedition to Algiers, in the year
1 54 1 , and had nearly been lost in a tempest at sea ; being only saved by
catching hold of a cable, that providentially came in his way, with his teeth,
when nearly exhausted by swimming in the dark, and thereby with great peril
drawn up into the ship. He was with the Duke of Somerset at the battle of
Musselburgh, 1547,t and for his great bravery knighted ; he was one of those
who continued in England under Mary, but without any disavowal of his prin-
ciples, being a firm and zealous Protestant ; he interested himself greatly in the
case of Sir John Cheke, and would probably have fallen into trouble, had he
If, from my eyes by thee detained,
The Wanderer cross the seas,
No more thy love shall soothe, as friend,
No more as sister, please.
His stay, let Cornwall's shore engage,
And peace with Mildred dwell :
Else war with Cecil's name I wage,
Perpetual war Farewell.
* Lodge, iii. 9.— where may be seen a letter from Mr. Cecil to Lord Talbot, 1590.
t See Vol. i.
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 337
not been protected, as was in all likelihood the case with his friend Sir William,
by those to whom he had shewn civilities, or succoured under Edward. On
the accession of Elizabeth, and probably through the influence of the Secretary,
he had the honour of being the first ambassador appointed by her Majesty, and
that to the Court of Ferdinand I. Emperor of Germany ; he was very honoura-
bly entertained by the Emperor, and had a great hand in endeavouring to pro-
cure a match between Elizabeth and the Archduke Charles, even with the con-
sent, approbation, and assistance of Philip of Spain ; to whose Court being
unfortunately sent upon a second mission on his return from Germany, he
received some slights and indignities there which his high spirit could ill brook ;
he was careful, however, never to compromise under any affronts the honour
of his Sovereign, but his time was passed uncomfortably enough ; " in winter
in a stove, and in summer in a barn," as he described it,* and in the end his
health suffered. He obtained his recal by an elegy to Elizabeth, after the manner
of Ovid, and towards the end of 1564, published the first five books of his
" Right Ordering of the English Republic ;" a work which he had written to
occupy and amuse the dull hours of his Spanish ministry, and which he de-
dicated to his old and good friend Sir William Cecil. It is doubted whether
this work was ever carried further.
Sir Thomas is celebrated for many virtues, but for none more than the warmth
and tried sincerity of his friendship ; which shone forth not more in the case of
the Protector Somerset, whose cause he never abandoned,')" than of some of
much lower rank, but equally bad fortune, to whom he remained firmly attached
to the last. It was therefore very properly said of him, " a true friend was the
best picture of this gentleman's mind," since his love knew no bounds, could not
be diverted by any danger, or divorced even by death itself; in fact, he wrote
many elegies and other poems in praise of his deceased as well as of his living
friends. His long poem on the unhappy Lady Jane Grey, is too well known to
be insisted upon at present ; he translated the Morice encomium of Erasmus,
having been a disciple and friend of the author; he wrote a poem in praise of
his first patron Henry VIII., which he addressed to Queen Elizabeth. Two
other patrons, Sir Thomas Parry and Lord Paget came in for their share of
• " Hieme in furno, setate in horreo."
t As this attachment to the Protector kept him from accepting any place under Northumber-
land, we may justly infer that had Cecil at all disgraced himself with the Protector, as some
have insinuated, Chaloner's friendship for him would have abated.
VOL. II. 2 X
338 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
such posthumous praises, nor was his good friend Sir John Cheke forgotten.
We shall conclude our notice of Sir Thomas Chaloner by observing that his best
work de Repub. Anglorum instauranda is said to have been written on the express
encouragement of Sir William Cecil, and that the latter, notwithstanding his
many public avocations, did honour to the memory of his friend, by a long copy
of Latin verses, since published with his works ; but still more by his great
attention to his son, whose education after Sir Thomas's death, and the marriage
of his widow with a second husband, he took wholly upon himself ; nor was
his care and benevolence ill-bestowed, or ill-requited. For his young friend
applied himself so diligently to study, as to become accomplished in many
branches of learning, particularly natural history, which he learned and cultivated
with such good success during his travels in Italy, as to enable him on his return
to make a discovery from which his country may be said to have derived most
important advantages ever since ; we allude to the alum mines near Gisborough,
in the county of York, which were the first ever known in this kingdom, and
which we owe entirely, as it appears, to the sagacity and very curious observa-
tions and experiments of the second Sir Thomas Chaloner (for the son, it may
be observed, obtained as well as his father the honour of knighthood) : in a
journey afterwards to Scotland, he so ingratiated himself with King James and
his Queen, as to be particularly chosen to accompany them to England on the
death of Elizabeth, and to take upon him the whole charge of their son Prince
Henry, " That delight and glory of Britain," as Camden calls him.
Among Lord Burghley's memorandums, for the year 1564; we find the
following —
" August 5. The Queen at Cambridge."
This is certainly a very short account of one of the most curious visits this
great Queen paid, and a very modest one, considering the part Lord Burghley
had to perform in it, as Chancellor of that very University, and yet there is not
a word more about it, which may excuse the extreme brevity with which events
of great importance are known to have been noted down by him, sometimes
with an almost apparent want of feeling ; as, " 16 Oct. Ridley, B. of London,
Latymer, burnt : 21 March, Cranmer, A. B. of Cant., burnt — eodem die Card.
Poo/e sang his first mass." Considering his almost intimate acquaintance with
these eminent persons, and martyrs to the great cause in which he was so much
interested, as we have shewn in our first volume, it is well to have a specimen
of his conciseness, on an occasion wherein he had so much temptation to enlarge,
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 339
as the Queen's visit to Cambridge, when, next to her Majesty's self, he was
actually, by office, the greatest personage.*
The brief account of this visit, is as follows : " The daies of her abode, were
passed in scholasticall exercises of philosophic, physicke, and divinity; the
nights, in comedies and tragedies, set forth partly by the whole University,
and partly by the students of the King's College. At the breaking up of the
Divinity act, being on Wednesday, the 9th of August, (on the which day, she
rode thro' the towne, and viewed the colleges, those goodly and auncient monu-
ments of the kings of England, her noble predecessors,) she made within
St. Marie's Church, a notable oration in Latine, in the presence of the whole
University, to the students great comfort."
It may easily be supposed, that the Chancellor had much fatigue to undergo,
upon this great and solemn occasion ; and the account of the whole, as con-
tained in the " Triumphs of the Muses," communicated to Mr. Peck, from a MS
in the hands of Roger Gale, Esq., and collated with the Karl. MSS. 7037, 109,
entitled, Queen Elizabeth's coming to Cambridge, 1564, begins with Sir
William's letter to the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Hawford, Master of Christ's College;
acquainting him with the Queen's intended design to come thither, and wishing
him to provide lodgings, and such academical exercises, for her entertainment,
as might be most agreeable for her; dated from Greenwich, 12 Julii, 1564. We
need not transcribe the whole letter, as it is extant in many other works ; but after
speaking of the preparation for the Queen's lodgings, he adds, "as for myself, I
meane to lodge with my old nurse, in St. John's College ; and so I praye you
inform the Master." Upon the receipt of this letter, the two Proctors were
dispatched to London, to confer with Sir William, where they received from
his hands all such orders as were necessary ; but that every thing might
be the better seen to, he accepted the offer of Dr. Goodman, Dean of West-
minster, to go thither to superintend the preparations, by whom he sent a letter,
ending, " I mean to be at Sir Ralfe Sadler's, on Thursday next, at night ; and
on Friday night, at Cambridge, or near to Haselingefilde, if I may find any
lodging. 1 Aug. 1564. W. Cecyll."
• The next entry to that of the Queen's being at Cambridge, is as follows : " Aug. 18. Her
Majesty at xx in Leicestershire :" which we merely notice, because Mr. Nichols, in liis great work
of the Progresses, says, under the year 1565, " it is not very clear whether she was in Leicester-
shire in this or the preceding year."— Preface, xv. It is evident from Lord Burghley's Notes, that
she was there in 1564, though it is a pity he was not more particular, as a guide to such researches
as Mr. N. was unable to complete.
340 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564,
" Upon Friday, the 4th of August, Sir William arrived at Cambridge, with his
lady, in a coach, about 3 o'clock, in the afternoon, and took up his lodging at
the Master's chambers of St. John's College, where he was received with an
oration. When he had reposed himself awhile, he sent for the Vice-Chancellor,
and all the Heads of Colleges ; for he would in no case, that either they should
meet him by the way (as it was thought good by some to do), or to come ere he
was ready, for he was troubled with lameness ; he communicated to them all his
wishes, particularly, that ' uniformity should be shewed in apparel and religion,'
and so for a time dismissed the company ; willing and commanding the Bedells
(a curious instance of his politeness), to wait upon the Vice-Chancellor home-
ward, who would otherwise have remained with Sir William, being High
Chancellor. He was abundantly thanked by the University, for his courteous
and polite attentions, and requested to place himself at their head, at the
receiving of the Queen, to deliver up the Bedells' staves : which he promised ;
whereupon he was presented with two pair of gloves, a march-pain,* and two
sugar loaves ; and then they took their leave."
On the 5th of August, the Lord Robert Dudley arrived as Lord High
Steward of the University ; he was met at King's College, which was the place
of the Court, by the Chancellor and Heads of Colleges, preceded by all the
Bedells bare-headed, where after he had properly saluted Sir William Cecil, he
was brought to his lodgings at the Master's, the doors and walls being hung
with complimentary verses, and the same gifts presented to him as had been
given to the Chancellor ; he then accompanied the Chancellor to his lodgings
in St. John's College, where all the Members were severally presented to him.
It is quite unnecessary to enter into the details of this remarkable solemnity,
since such full accounts are to be found of it, in works well known to the
public. It was on the 5th of August her Majesty arrived, and while she was
receiving all due honours and submission from the Mayor and Corporation, " Sir
William Cecyl," we read, " sate upon his horse at the gate beyond the Queen's
College, and caused certain of the guard to keep the street with strict com-
mandment as was given before ; and turned all the train into the town, except
the Lords and Officers in attendance upon her Grace. Then came the Trum-
peters, and, by solemn blast, declared her Majesty to approach ; then followed
the Lords in their order and degree; her Almoner, the Bishop of Rochester
* Or March-pane, a sweet biscuit, composed of sugar and almonds, like those now called
Macaroons.— See Nares's Glossary, where there is a long and curious article upon it.
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 341
[Guest] bare-headed, with the Bishop of Ely ; then Garter King at Arms, in
his royal coat ; with divers Sergeants at Arms ; then the Lord Hunsdon with the
sword in a royal scabbard of goldsmith's work; and after him, the QUEENS
MAJESTIE, with a great company of Ladies and Maids of Honor ; who, at the
entrance of Queen's College was informed by Mr. Secretary, of the Scholars,
of what sort they were, and the like he did of all other companies and degrees."
The Queen's dress upon this occasion, is described to have been a gown of
black velvet, pinked ; a caul upon her head set with pearls and precious stones ;
a hat that was spangled with gold ; and a bush of feathers.
The Ladies in attendance forsook their horses when her Majesty arrived
among the Doctors, and the Queen alone remained on horseback.
At King's College south gate, the Mayor riding before her Majesty bare-
headed, stayed himself; as being arrived, according to the instructions he had
received the day before from the Chancellor, at the limits of his jurisdiction
and authority.
" When the Queen had arrived at the west door of the chapel, then Sir
William CECVL kneeled down and welcomed her Grace, shewing unto her the
order of the Doctors; and the Bedells kneeling kissed their staves, and deli-
vered them to the Chancellor, who likewise kissed the same, and so delivered
them to the Queen's hands, who could not well hold them all ; and her Grace
gently and merrily re-delivered them, willing him and other Magistrates of
the University to minister justice uprightly, as she trusted they did ; or she
would take them into her own hands and see to it ; adding, although the Chan-
cellor did halt (for he was lame, as has been said before), yet she trusted that
justice did not halt."
For the orations spoken, comedies and tragedies acted, services performed,
we must refer to other books (particularly the Progresses by Mr. Nichols), but
must notice that by the hands of Sir William and the Lord Robert, her
Majesty was presented in the name of the University, with four pair of
Cambridge double gloves, edged and trimmed with two laces of fine gold ; and
six boxes of fine comfits and other conceits, " which having took thankfully,
she went to her chamber."
" Then the Bedells, receiving the Chancellor at the same place, went before
him with their staves to his lodging, he riding upon a little black nag. '
On the 6th of August the Queen was entertained at King's College; but it is
impossible for us to attempt here to give an account of all that passed ; it is
342 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1564.
sufficient to say, that every thing was regulated according to the strictest orders
of the Chancellor.
On the 7th her Majesty was at St. Mary's Church, where many public
exercises were performed, and in all the faculties ; the Chancellor sitting next to
the Queen's feet, with a cloth and long velvet cushion before him. It is remark-
able, that upon this and other occasions, the two Proctors of the University of
Oxford were present in their full academical dresses, sent for, as one of them
stated to the reporter of the proceedings there,* by a special invitation from the
Chancellor Cecil, that they might be upon the spot to observe what passed at
Cambridge, in case the Queen should be disposed also to visit the. sister Univer-
sity. Through the Chancellor's influence, they received peculiar attentions from
the whole body, were seated next to the Cambridge Proctors at all the ceremonies,
having two of the Oxford Bedells in attendance upon them, and were daily
entertained at some College or Hall. There was certainly a propriety in this,
which bespoke a considerable refinement of manners for those times. Leicester
was indeed Chancellor of Oxford, but we have authority for asserting, that the
invitation originated entirely with the Secretary, thereby rendering the compliment
to the sister University, and her Chancellor, the more generous and delicate.
When ail things were ready for the commencement of any public exercise,
and the Chancellor had explained to the Queen the order of their proceedings,
he caused the Proctors to be brought before her Majesty, in order to receive from
her own mouth authority to moderate and rule the disputations, which, upon
their kneeling down to take her commands, she conveyed to them in these words :
" Omnia fiant ordine." Every body continued standing, until the Queen, by
the Chancellor, had granted them permission to be seated. Whenever the voices
of the disputants became inaudible to the Queen, she would herself call out,
" Loquimini altius." On the evening of this day, the 7th, her Majesty heard
the tragedy of Dido, in hexameter verse, performed by the students of King's
College only, the Chancellor Cecil, and Lord Robert, High Steward, " vouch-
safing to hold the books" (for the purpose probably of prompting the per-
formers, and to ensure the greater order).
On the 9th of August, the last day her Majesty passed in the University, she
seems to have visited many Colleges, " riding in state royal ; the Chancellor and
>
* Dr. Robinson, as some suppose, Chaplain to Archbishop Parker ; others
think it might be Mr. Stokys.
1564.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 343
all the Lords and Gentlemen riding before her, and her Ladies behind." At
King's College she received from the Provost a book covered with red velvet
containing all the verses made upon her Grace's coming. But the Chancellor
had, before her coming, given particular directions for preparing two books for
her ; in one of which was to be written, in the Roman hand, all the verses,
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldee, and English, that should be made or set up in
different parts of the University ; in the other, the names of all founders and
benefactors of distinct Colleges, present members of those societies, and of
eminent persons educated there in times past. These books were prepared
accordingly, and carried round by the Chancellor to the several Colleges as he
attended her Majesty, to whom he read what appertained thereto, in their
proper places. As her Grace rid through the streets, she talked very much with
divers scholars in Latin ; and, at her lighting off her horse, with Latin dismissed
them.* At St. Mary's Church in the afternoon of the same day, she took her
leave of the University, in a Latin speech, easily to be seen in other books. She
proposed to address them in English; but being told by the Chancellor that
nothing might be said openly to the University in English, she required him the
rather to speak, because he was Chancellor, and the Chancellor is the Queen's
mouth. Whereunto he answered, that he was Chancellor of the University, and
not hers. At length, being moved on every side, she addressed them in a Latin
speech,! ^»ch may be read in Fuller, Nichols, &c. and in the latter with
Mr. Peck's translation. J The speech of course savoured largely of the taste of
the times; and at her conclusion, when her auditors saluted her with loud accla-
mations of " Vivat Regina," she said, " Taceat Regina," wishing they were all
in the way, in regard to her oration, to drink of the waters of Lethe.^
* Strange as this may appear at present, it is probable, that among the Ladies in attendance on
her Majesty, there were some who could have done the same— particularly the Chancellor's own
Lady, Mildred Lady Cecil, who, as we have observed in our first volume, was known to be a
great proficient both in Latin and Greek.
f " Prepared probably by Cecil himself."— Aikins Court of Elizabeth.
t In Nichols' Progresses are references of course to the other books that treat of the particulars
of this visit.
% Of the Queen's extraordinary learning there can be no doubt. The famous Roger Ascham
was at this time her Secretary, who being often with her at Windsor, had opportunities of knowing
what, with a sly inuendo against the less diligent Prebendaries or Canons of that Collegiate
Church, he has stated in his celebrated work, the Schoolmaster. " Beside her readiness in Latin
Italian, French, and Spanish," says he, " I believe she read there at Windsor (1563, &c.) more
Greek every day, than some Prebendaries of that Church did read Latin in a whole week ;" and to
344 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
On the 10th of August the Queen left Cambridge, with many ceremonies, as
may be concluded. She dined on that day at the Bishop of Ely's at Stanton,
and slept at Hinchinbrook, the seat of Sir Henry Cromwell.
In 1565 the Queen paid her first visit to Kenilworth, passing through
Coventry in her way to it, where the Mayor, presenting her with a purse
containing £100, she observed, "that it was a goodly gift, £100 in gold! I
have few such gifts !" The Mayor replied, " If it please your Grace there is a
great deal more in it." " What is that?" said the Queen. "It is, Madam,"
said the Mayor, " the hearts of all your loving subjects." " I thank you,
Mr. Mayor," said her Majesty, " it is a great deal more indeed."
Queen Elizabeth labours to this day under such a stigma in the estimation of
all persons of sentiment and feeling, in consequence of her long incarceration
and final execution of Mary Queen of Scots, that it is well, in common justice,
to record such instances of her popularity amongst her own subjects. Courtly
shew how little superficial her reading of Greek was, in the estimation of that eminent scholar, he
affirms, "that when she read with him Demosthenes or jEschines, she made him often wonder,
when he saw how critically she understood, not only the force of the words, the structure of the
sentences, the propriety of the language, the ornament of the speech, and the handsome contexture
of the whole discourse, but those things also which are greater, viz. the sense and mind of the
orator, and the stress and drift of the whole cause, the law and desire of the people, the manner
and institution of every city, and all other things of that nature."
I have before my eyes another extraordinary contemporary testimony, that of the learned
Cooper, compiler of the " Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicse." The edition of *this work,
in my possession, was published in the year 1565, and is dedicated to the Earl of Leicester,
having his famous cognizance of the bear and ragged staff in the title-page. I must be excused
transcribing one passage, as it alludes to the Queen's visit to Cambridge; her speech there does
credit to her Majesty, and the Chancellors of both Universities, Cecila.nd Leicester.
" Sed imprudenter a me et intempestive haec illata videtur querela, cum omnium jam sermone
pervulgatum sit, tuo maxime consilio, et clarissimi viri SICILLI Majestatem regiam jamdudum
iniisse rationern, quemadmodum non artes solum injuria temporis labantes, in pristinam restitu-
antur dignitatem, sed etiam ut Juventus ignavialanguescensglorioe stimulis ereotee magis constanter
perferat graves studiorum labores, hanc opinionem mcntibus hominum infixit anno superiore
Cantubrigiensis profectio : Cum Regia Majestas in ipsis quasi Musarum delubris, non solum
praesentia sua declaravit hones tissimarum artium cultores sibi et curaa fuisse, et delectation!, sed
etiam splendida et illustri orationc studiosorum animos ad singularem quandam spem amplissi-
morum virtutis et industriae prrcmiorum concitabat :" — but the whole epistle should be read.
Cooper was advanced first to the Deanery of Gloucester, 1569, then to the see of Lincoln, and
lastly, to that of Wincheter, 1584. He died Bishop of that see, April 29, 1594.— See what is said
of this learned prelate, and other lexicographers of those times, in Drake's Shakespeare, fyc,
vol. i. ch. ii.
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 345
compliments are, in general, not much to be depended upon ; but there are facts
upon record, regarding the popularity of certain of our English and British
Sovereigns, not to be doubted. Elizabeth was always popular, and never
appeared in public but to her advantage. How much she deserved to be
so at this time, may be judged from an excellent letter to her from the celebrated
John Fox, on her speech at Cambridge and visit to that University, to be seen in
Strype's Annals, in Latin and English, ch. xxxix.
It is difficult to account for the following entry in Lord Burghley's Notes in
the year 1565.
" August .... The Queens Majestic seemed to be much offended with the
Erie of Leicester ; and so she wrote an obscure sentence in a book at Windsor."
This is supposed to have been after the visit to Kenilworth. [" The cause," says
Strype, " seemed to be for not liking the Queen's marrying with the Archduke."]
An unpleasant circumstance occurred in the course of the year 1564, which,
though we could not mention in its proper place,* it would be improper
to pass unnoticed, as it related to the succession, which gave the Secretary no
small trouble at all times ; but, in this particular instance, implicated his great
friend and relative, the Lord Keeper, •(" and, in some degree, himself; we allude
to the case of Hales, who, being a zealous Protestant, imprudently put forth a
book calculated to set aside the Scotch claims (which Elizabeth, in her heart, is
supposed to have favoured), by shewing that the descendants of the Duchess of
Suffolk were next to the Queen; as was certainly the case by Henry's will. This
imprudent book, fortified by the opinions of lawyers beyond sea, whom Hales had
been forward to consult, had a sad effect with regard to the surviving represen-
* The necessity we lay under of relating what passed regarding the marriage of Lord Darnley
and the Queen of Scots, during the years 1564, 1565, has been the occasion of our omitting several
circumstances in their regular order, particularly some that did not require to be more than
noticed in the present work ; such as the death of the great Reformer Calvin, which took place
at Geneva on the 27th of May, 1564, in the fifty-fifth or fifty-sixth year of his age. It was in the
same year also, that the celebrated Creed of Pope Pius IV., as settled by the Council of Trent,
and still regarded as the acknowledged summary of the Roman Catholic faith, was first published
in the form of a Bull, addressed to all the faithful in Christ. — See Butler's Book of the Roman
Catholic Church, 1825.
f The Lord Keeper was obliged to absent himself from the Court; but the Secretary never
rested till he got him restored to the Queen's favour. Camden says he was accused by Leicester
of being privy to Hales' book, and of encouraging the Suffolk claims against Mary of Scots,
" whom," says he, " Dudley was wooing with all the offices he could."
VOL. II. 2 Y
346 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
tative of that family, the unfortunate Lady Catherine Grey, sister to Lady Jane.*
After having been divorced from the son of Lord Pembroke, her first husband (to
whom she was married on the same day that her sister married the Lord Guilford
Dudley, see vol. i., and divorced by the policy of her husband's father, on Mary's
accession, see Nicolas's Life of Lady Jane Grey, cxviii.), she had been, as
it was alleged, privately married to the Earl of Hertford, by whom she had a son :
that son, according to Hales, if legitimate, would come into the immediate line
of inheritance, totally superseding all the Scottish claims. As the Queen had
not been consulted about the marriage, an attention then held to be due to the
crown in all cases of such near relationship, it had become a matter of suspicion,
and both Lord Hertford and his Lady were committed to the Tower. Cecil was
so hurt by all these proceedings, as to express himself in a letter to Sir
Thomas Smithf in the following terms ; " I pray that God may by this chance
give her Majesty a disposition to consider hereof [i. e. of the succession] ;
that either by her marriage, or by some common order, we her poor sub-
jects might know where to lean and adventure our lives, with contentation
of our consciences." Unfortunately for the Secretary, the case was particularly
referred to him, and, however, irksome the task,J he assured his friend
* Not to the consort of Lady Jane: an odd mistake, to be corrected in the Preface to Nichols's
Progresses, xxvi.
-r Camden observes that Cecil kept his own judgment upon this point fast locked up in his own
breast, and so resolved always to do, unless the Queen herself should command him to deliver it,
who certainly never heard any thing more unwillingly, than that the title of succession should be
called in question.
J Mr. Hallam, in his Constitutional History of England, speaking of Sir William, says, " Even
Cecil, though he had taken a share in prosecuting Lady Catherine ;" " taken a share," seems not
exactly the expression that should have been used, according to the letter referred to, especially
as it is followed by an insinuation that he might secretly have favoured the Suffolk claims — in
fact, he probably could not decline the reference, and as to his opinions, as long as Mary of Scot-
land had a Protestant heir, they may be held to have depended much on future contingencies. As
Mr. Hallam himself judiciously observes, he might not like to discountenance a party from which
the Queen and religion had nothing to dread. Anthony Wood, pretends to affirm that Cecil had
as much hand in the writing and publication of Hales's book as the Chancellor, but this does not
appear. See, however, what is said of it in the Article assigned to Sir Nicholas Bacon in the
Biographia Britannica. But it should still be noticed, that among the corrigenda of the first
volume of the latter work (enlarged edition), a publication is referred to, which is judged to
afford a complete proof that Sir N. Bacon was a strenuous assertor of the title of the Queen of
Scots, against Sir Anthony Brown.
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 347
Sir Thomas, that he would proceed uprightly, neither inclining ad dextram
or ad sinistram. The marriage which Hales attempted to prove and defend,
after the Archbishop had given sentence against it in default of witnesses, was
as some thought no more than a contract to marry by mutual consent ;* besides
the Lord Hertford and the Lady Catherine, her uncle Lord John Grey, was, for
the part he had taken in the business, put into custody of the Court. When the
plague raged in London, in consequence of the return of the troops from France,
Lord Hertford and the Lady Catherine were both removed from the Tower; the
former being placed with his mother, the Duchess of Somerset, the latter with her
uncle, Lord John, at Pyrgo in Essex, where in the end, she died,f it is said, of
grief. (1567.) Her uncle, also, is reputed to have died of " thought," meaning,
probably, sorrow ; but as he was of a gouty habit, his death may be otherwise
* In Bishop Jewel's letter to Peter Martyr, already cited, he thus describes the case : " Est
puella quaedam nobilis, Domina Catherine, Ducis Suffolchiensis Filia, ex sanguine regio, eoque
nominatim scripta ab Henrico Octavo in Testamento, ut si quid accidisset, quarto loco succederet.
Ex ea, Comes Hertfordiensis, Juvenis, Ducis Somersetensis Filius, suscepit Filium, etmulti putant
ex stupro, sed ut ipis dicunt, ex legitimis nuptiis. Se enim clam inter se contraxisse, et advocato
sacrificatore, et paucis quibusdam arbitris, junxisse nuptias. Ea res, turbavit animos multorum ;
nam si sunt verse nuptiee, Puer, qui susceptus est, alitur ad spem Regni." And then follows the
reflection on the uncertainty of the succession before mentioned, " O nos miseros," &c. — Burnet,
iii. Records, No. 65. Jewel's expression, " et mvlti putant ex stupro" seems to contradict what is
said by the author of the Court of Elizabeth, that " No one doubted that they were lawfully
married." Strype, in his Life of Archbishop Parker, says, " At most, it seems to have been but a
contract, consummated without the ceremony of a solemnization." Others, however, allege that
time was not allowed for bringing forward the witnesses. The marriage at all events could not
be proved at the time. Cecil, himself, in communicating the fact of her first pregnancy to the
Archbishop, only observes, " She says she is married." This letter bears date, August 12, 1561.
The Archbishop's sentence was not passed before the middle of May, 1562.
In January, 1562, Sir John Mason wrote to Cecil, recommending harsher measures to be adopted
with regard to Lord Hertford ; " His imprisonment," says he, "fatteneth him, and rather thereby
hath he commodity than hindrance :" which certainly seems to have been the case. The whole
letter is curious. — See Haynes, 396. The Secretary does not appear to have been swayed by this
letter, to any greater severities.
f It seems difficult to say where Lady Catherine died. Fuller says she died in the Tower.
Others say at Pyrgo; Fuller is decidedly wrong ; she certainly died in private custody, accord-
ing to the custom of those times, January 26, 1567. And as she was buried at Yoxford, in
Suffolk, it was probably thereabouts ; from Reyce's MSS. on Suffolk Antiquities, it would appear
to have been at Cockfield Hall, Sir Owen Hopton's. — See Nicolas' 's Literary Remains of Lady
Jane Grey,
348 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
accounted for.* On his decease, the unfortunate Lady Catherine was placed in
charge of the Secretary Petre, the Earl at the time being prisoner with Sir John
•Mason ; before her death she craved pardon of the Queen, for having contracted
marriage without her knowledge, commending her children (for she bore two sons
to Lord Hertford, who were afterwards declared legitimate) to her Majesty's
protection, and earnestly imploring liberty for the unhappy Earl. Her suffer-
ings were certainly great, and her punishment most severe, increased, however,
probably by the injudicious interposition, and " foolish attempt," as Cecil him-
self called it, of her opinionated advocate Hales ; knowing the character of
Elizabeth, and her extreme repugnance to make any positive declaration of her
heir, nothing could have been managed worse for the Lady Catherine, than to
discover an heir in the son of a marriage contracted, or said to have been con-
tracted, without her privity or consent ; especially as Elizabeth herself was under
a sort of promise to Mary Queen of Scots, to take no step, or encourage
any proceedings tending to invalidate her claim, provided she might be excused
from declaring her to be her heir.
It is not exactly to be known, who of the Queen's Council encouraged these
severe proceedings^ but we have seen many letters in the Museum from the
Grey family, to Sir William Cecil, thankfully acknowledging his good disposi-
* The Duchess of Suffolk, her mother, daughter of Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, youngest sister
of Henry VIII., died in 1563. The family was certainly extremely unfortunate. The Duke and
his eldest daughter, Lady Jane, were both beheaded. Lady Catherine divorced from her first
husband, and at the time of her mother's death, a prisoner in the Tower. Lady Mary, the third
daughter, regardless of her high birth, married the Groom Porter at the Court, and even the
Duchess herself, after the death of the Duke of Suffolk, married one Adrian Stoakes, a gentleman
of no family pretensions whatsoever; " a mean gentleman," Camden calls him. After all,
though the house of Suffolk had many and potent friends, the title is said to have had great
and remarkable defects ; for it would appear that both the Dukes of Suffolk, Brandon, who married
Mary, Henry's sister, Queen Dowager of France, and Grey, who married the Lady Frances their
daughter, had other wives living at the time of their marriages. — See Memoirs of Cecil, Lord
Burleigh, Sfc. p. 38.
t Severe as they were, the author of the Court of Elizabeth (Miss Aikin) does not hesitate to
represent them as slight or mild, compared with the customary severity of the age. And indeed
this always deserves to be considered. It is curious that so far from Lord Hertford's heart being
softened by misfortune, more than twenty-four years afterwards, he did all he could to separate
his eldest son Lord Beauchamp from a wife he doated upon, on nearly the same grounds as he
had been separated from Lady Catherine. Lord Beauchamp in his distress applied to Lord
Burghley.— See Strype's Annals, iii. 507, 8,9.
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 349
tion to serve them; and begging him to interest himself with the Qtieen for a
pardon.* All the letters seem to imply an affinity and relationship between
the parties, the Secretary being constantly addressed as their cousin, and
remembrances to their cousin Lady Cecil, being quite common. Nobody had any
absolute power with Elizabeth, so that it would be wrong to conclude that Sir
William, if he did not recommend, could have prevented, what took place in
this melancholy affair. Lord John Grey, on an occasion formerly noticed,
certainly regarded him as one in the Queen's Council contending against many,
and almost every thing, in this particular case, concurs to prove, that if he
could have effectually assisted the unfortunate, but devoted couple, he certainly
would. The following letter transcribed from the original in the Museumf is
sufficient to shew this. It is from the unhappy Lady Catherine herself, 1563.
" Good cosyne Cecill :J after my very hartye commendacions to my good cosyne
* Hales was Clerk of the Hanaper ; a learned man, and devoted to the cause of the Reforma-
tion; which rendered him apprehensive of the return of Popery, if Mary's title should be
acknowledged ; the friends of Protestantism were generally, therefore, suspected of being the
advocates of the Suffolk claims and pretensions, and this was the principal occasion of the Lord
Keeper's disgrace. There was in reality no fault in the mere discussion of such a question, had
not the situation of the Queen rendered it hazardous. She is even suspected of not having been
so angry as she pretended to be, seeing that it might possibly stagger the confidence of the Queen
of Scots, and render her more dependent on herself. Sir Thomas Smith, when made acquainted
with the disturbance this business occasioned, threw out the following reflection, in one of his
letters to the Secretary. " Video periculosum esse in rebus arcanis principum et regnorum nimis
velle sapere.'' " I plainly perceive how dangerous a thing it is, to be too forward in prying into
the secret affairs of kings and kingdoms." The evidence upon the questions put to Hales, &c.
may be seen in Haynes. Hales not only acquitted Lord John of any sinister designs, but pro-
nounced him to be, from what he knew of him, one of the faithfullest subjects the Queen had.
From this event another proof may be drawn of the difficulties of Elizabeth's situation. Had
she complied with Mary's desire to be declared heir, she would have encouraged her Papistical
and depressed her Protestant subjects. Had she confirmed the Suffolk claims, she would have
irritated the Papists, and sanctioned the injustice of her father, of which Mary had certainly no
small reason to complain ; if, to accommodate these differences, she had resolved to marry, she
was probably wise enough to foresee that it must be with some great sacrifice of her own impor-
tance, such as Melvil ventured to point out. " I am resolved," said she, " never to marry, if I
be not necessitated thereto by the Queen (of Scots) my sister's harsh behaviour toward me. I
know the truth of that, Madam, said I : you need not tell it me. Your Majesty thinks, if you
were married, you would be but Queen of England ; and now you are both King and Queen. I
know your spirit cannot endure a commander." + Lansd. MSS. ii.
J There was one connexion between the families. Lady Cecil's brother married a daughter
of Lord John Grey.
350 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
your wyfe and yow, wyth lyke thanks for your greate friendship showed me in
thys my lords delyvery, and myne,* wyth the obtaynyng of the Queen Majesties
most gracious favor thus farforth extended towards us. I cannot but acknowledg
my selfe bounden and beholdyng to yow therefore, and as I am sure yow dout
not of myne owne dear lords good wyll, for the requitall thereof to the utter-
most of hys power, so I beseech yow cosyne Cecill, make the lyke account of
me duryng life to the uttermost of my power, beseching your farther frendship
for the obtayning of the Quene Majesties most gracious pardon and favor
towards me, which wyth upstreeched hands, and downe bent knees, from
the bottom of my harte, most humbly I crave, thus restyng in prayer, for
the Quene Majesties long raigne over us, the forgevness of myne offence, the
short enjoying of my owne deare lord and husband, with assured hope, through
Gods grace, and yowr good helpe, and my lord Robert, for the enjoying of the
Quenes highnesse favor in that behalfe, I byd you my owne good cosyne most
hartely farewell. From Pyrgo, the therd of September, your assured frend,
and cosyne to my small power, KATHABYNE HARTFORD."
" To my very lovyng cosyne Sir William Cecyll, Knight,
chefe Secretary to the Quenes Majestie, give thaes."
The very next paper in the Vol. of MSS. from which the above is extntcted,
is a letter from Lord John Grey to the Secretary, with a copy of his niece's
letter to the Queen, which he submits to Sir William's correction, if he should
find any thing amiss in it.
The next also is a letter from Lord John, beginning thus : " Cousin Cecil, my
lady Catherine hath sent you and my 1 [ady] her cousine a Pyrgo Doo, which
* This seems to shew that their release from the Tower was Cecil's doing, whether on occasion
of the plague, or as Strype in his Life of Parker states it to be, on account of her own ill health
there ; and it would appear that Sir William had done what he could to amend her situation in
the Tower, since there is to be found among his papers an account of the things supplied from the
Queen's wardrobe for her accommodation, with the indignant remarks of some friend in the
margin, as to the base quality of the articles. Some are stated to be, " ould and corse, some so
broken as not to be worth tenpence, some stark naught, some nothing worth, some mean." The
articles are only fourteen in all ; consisting of tapestry for hangings, window curtains, quilts, bed,
bolsters and pillows of down, fustian, carpets, chairs, footstools, mostly of silk or velvet. From
a letter of the Council to Lord John Grey to be seen in Haynes, taken from a minute of Secretary
Cecil, it appears that they expected, and hoped, that when she removed to Pyrgo, to be out of the
way of the plague, she "would not long lack her Majesty's favour, but recover it by all good
means," &c. — Haynes, 405.
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 351
though it cannot compare with the fattest, may well steppe forthe in the middle
sorte. I speak this in the praise of Pyrgo Park.
" Well good Cousin (it proceeds), her chiefest hope consisteth in you and the
Counsell for the securing and full perfecting of the Queen Majesty's most
gracious favour towards her and my lord, which we daily pray for — assuredly
she pines away for thought." But to leave this sad story.
In the month of April, 1564, the Secretary appears to have received from
Venice, a most curious letter writter by Dennum, who had been sent into Italy
a short time before, to get intelligence of foreign conspiracies and contrivances;
and who played his cards so well, in that almost necessary employ, as to
obtain information, according to his own account, of what was doing in the
Vatican. A copy of this paper was long preserved in the Queen's private
closet, but in course of time came into the hands of Sir James Ware. It
appears from this report to Cecil, that Pope Pius in consultation with his
Clergy, had determined, that in support of the invaded rights and jurisdictions
of the Roman See, he should bestow the Queen's realm on any Prince who
would attempt to conquer it; but that previously to this, he should offer the
Queen to confirm the English liturgy, some things being altered, provided she
would acknowledge the same from Rome ; but if denied, then to asperse the
liturgy of England by all ways and conspiracies imaginable ; and a license to
be granted to any of the Roman orders, to preach, speak, or write against the
new established Church of England, particularly abroad, to render England
odious. They were to be allowed, for these purposes, to assume any names or
characters they chose, and to correspond with the Cardinals, Archbishops, and
other persons in authority under the Church of Rome.
That to prevent bribery, or other false tricks, the above licensed persons
should be also carefully watched by others, who should in no manner discover
themselves, but pretend to be strange to them, and to resort to them only as
some of their converts.
We have spoken before of the extraordinary pardon to be granted to those
who should assault the Queen ; but dispensations also were to be secured to
them for taking any oaths, even to swear to all heresies in England, with a
reserve to help the Church of Rome, whenever opportunity should offer. This,
so far from regarding as sin, or any crime against the souls of the parties, they
were to account to be meritorious, as done with an intention to advance the
Roman Catholic faith. The Romish party in England were to endeavour to
352 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
procure the Queen to marry one of the Catholic Princes ; and every individual
of that party was to be subjected to excommunication and a perpetual curse,
who should not do his utmost to favour and advance Mary of Scotland's pretence
to the crown of England.
These articles were reported to be all actually decreed and ordered by the
Pope's Council ; but as the information seems to have come from a professed
spy, we must allow the Papists to question the truth of it, as many are known
to do.
We must now turn to what was passing at home, where disputes were
revived, that led to great disturbances and caused divisions in the newly
reformed Church of England, highly gratifying to the Papists; while it
mortified in the same degree, all the zealous friends and admirers of that
Church ; we allude of course, to the objections of the precisians (or puritans) to
the habits, and other ceremonies, which the Church (and the Queen in right
of her supremacy) had decreed should be retained, as harmless and indifferent
in themselves, though they had been abused by the Papists ; but which abuse it
apppai-^d reasonable to think, had not so entirely contaminated them, as to
render them obnoxious under a mere correct form of Church Government, and
a purer system of Christianity. Though these were questions for the learned
only to resolve, yet it was impossible to keep the populace from interfering ;
in spite of the Queen's injunctions for a strict uniformity of worship, those
who had imbibed in foreign parts, at Frankfort originally, and afterwards
in Switzerland, during the Marian persecution, an extreme hatred of all
outward ornaments and distinctions, produced by their non- conformity, and
rude attacks upon the Establishment, a spirit of opposition in the people,
who took upon them to revile, and foully abuse all who wore the prescribed
habits, or administered according to the Queen's injunctions.* It is strange
that wise people, and able scholars, for such there certainly were among them,
should not be sensible of the advantages they were giving to the common
enemy by their feuds and animosities,! and how shallow the pretence was, of
* See Collier, ii. 494, 5.
t See on this the Answer to the Declaration of the London Clergy ; Strype's Annals, i. part ii..
215. There was nothing of which the Papists sought to avail themselves more, than these
unhappy disputes among the Reformers. They had authority from the Pope to enter into them
as parties, (see ib. p. 222, 3.) merely to widen the divisions, hoping the Queen herself would ulti-
mately be so wearied of them as to return into the bosom of their Church. The Answer to the
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 353
serving God, by resisting rulers who had ordained nothing, that could by any
distortion or sophistry be proved to be sinful;* which had to recommend it an
antiquity reaching beyond the proper sera of Popish corruptions, and which
those who were for retaining, had a greater right to retain, as the heads of the
Church and State, than any private individuals could have to abolish. To say
the least, England was independent ; had nothing to do with Luther, Zuing-
lius, or Calvin, except as far as they might happen to agree in their departure
from the Church of Rome ; and those who, after their self-banishment, came
home, infected with foreign principles, deserved to be regarded as foreigners ;
and punished for their contempt of the royal injunctions, as enemies to the
peace of the kingdom. From a full consideration of the state of the case
in the outset, we cannot bring ourselves to see things in any other point of
view; we would not call such persons rebels, but subjects under a grievous
, mistake, approaching to infatuation ;f but they found fautors in the Court, and
London Clergy, is a very important publication, as drawing a distinction between the ruder and
the wiser sort of the Dissenters, who questioned the habits and Ceremonies. The latter, it was
observed, though they asked for a greater liberty to their own consciences, did not condemn the
things themselves, nor yet the use of them, of wickedness. At the end of the book, are to be
found many of the letters that passed upon the subject in King Edward's days, translated into
English, having for the most part been written in Latin ; much stress was laid upon those of
Bucer and Peter Martyr, of which we have given an account in our first volume.
* See Bullinger's admirable distinction in his reply to the question, " An debeant Ecclesiasticis
leges praescribi vestiariee, ut iis distinguantur a Laicis." Burnet, iii. partii. 419. Oxford edit.
-(- We are not in any manner disposed to dispute the erroneous views taken at this time of the
Queen's Ecclesiastical Supremacy, especially as committed in her name, by her delegates of the
High Commission Court; nor are we insensible of the absurdity of expecting to bring all men to
be of one mind, by an act of uniformity but that the interference of the Puritans with the esta-
blished laws, was totally destructive of all peace, order, and decency, in the Church, is so evi-
dent from their own accounts, that it seems impossible for any reasonable person to doubt that
an act of uniformity was rendered necessary by their own disorderly proceedings, in disturbance
of the public mind. The following is Neal's account of the state of things in 1563, and for
which he blames the Bishops and conforming Clergy, for occasioning such dissensions about a cap
and a surplice ; the very charge that the Bishops and conforming Clergy had so much cause to
advance against the foreign precisians.
" The parochial Clergy," says he, " both in city and country had an aversion to the habits ;
they wore them sometimes, in obedience to the law, but more frequently administered without
them ; for which some were cited into the spiritual courts and admonished, the Bishops not
having yet assumed the courage of proceeding to suspension and deprivation. At length the
matter was laid before the Queen ; and it was represented, that some perform divine service and
VOL. II. 2 2
354 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
this made them bold. Leicester had pillaged the Church too much already,
and looking probably to further spoliations, cared not how closely it was shorn
of all outward symbols of consequence and grandeur; the lower it was
reduced, the richer he and his dependants might become ; and these foreign
lovers of simplicity were likely to do his work for him. Sir Francis Knolles,
the Queen's near relative, was a friend to them also ; upon a better principle,
perhaps, but one not less uncompromising, or severe ; so that the party from
the very beginning held its head high, and was not indeed to be despised, as
insignificant, on the score of learning, or generally speaking, virtuous intentions.
It has been thought, that the Queen on her visit to Cambridge, had given
offence to Thomas Cartwright, engaged in a public disputation with Preston,
her Majesty having so highly complimented the latter as to excite the jealousy of
Cartwright, and lay the foundation for all the troublesome contests which we
sliall find to have ensued; dreadfully to the. annoyance of the Secretary, fora
long series of years, if not indeed to the very end of his life. But Cartwright,
however conspicuous he became afterwards, was not the first public delinquent.
There were two at Oxford, who may be said to have begun the troubles of this
reign, it being judged right to bring them before the Queen's Commissioners;
Sampson, Dean of Christ Church, and Humphrey, President of Magdalen
College ; they were pressed by the Commissioners with the opinions of Bucer
and Peter Martyr, of which we have given an account in our first volume, in
the case of Bishop Hooper ; but all in vain. They were told, they must relin-
prayers in the chancel, others in the body of the church ; some in a seat made in the church,
some in the pulpit with their faces to the people ; some keep precisely to the order of the book,
some intermix psalms in metre ; some say with a surplice, and others without one — that some
administer the Communion with surplice and cap; some with surplice alone; others with none;
some •with chalice, others wilh a communion cup, others with a common cup ; some with unlea-
vened bread, and some with leavened — some receive kneeling, others standing, others sitting' ;
some baptize in a font, some in a bason ; some sign with the sign of a cross, others sign not; some
minister in scholar's cloaths, some in others." Surely instead of this horrible confusion, an act
of uniformity might have appeared a blessing. And the whole objection to the habits was, that
they had been abused to the purposes of Popery ; but so had the churches and the pulpits, to
which they laid such claim, and thought it so hard to be suspended from the use of them. One
of the reasons urged by them against wearing the habits was, that " Popish garments have many
superstitious mystical significations, for 'which purpose they are consecrated by the Papists; we
aught therefore to consecrate them also, or lay them wholly aside." — Why so ? would not the
omission to consecrate them, take off much of their former superstitious mystical signification ?
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 355
quish their appointments; and Sampson, indeed, was deprived in June, 1565.
Humphrey did by no means act so decidedly, but connived for some time.
As these two divines had been urged with the opinions of Bucer and Peter
Martyr,* both deceased, they judged it not amiss to apply to Bullinger t and
Gualter, the living fathers of the Swiss congregation, and the great friends of
the deceased Bishop Hooper ; but the answers of both dissuaded them from
quitting the ministry for things that did not wound the conscience, J and
admonished them to submit, if upon application to the crown they could not be
excused. The particular questions submitted to Bullinger, may be seen in
Strype, with Bullinger's excellent answers, in Gualter's name, as well as his own,
all in favour of conformity . One expression used by him is exceedingly good :§
he admonished that no man should frame a conscience to himself, in <j>i\ovfiKitf, out
of a love of contest — an admonition admirably suited to the occasion.)) Some
* In their letters written to Hooper and Alasco. See vol. i. ch. 24. anno 1550.
-r In Bullinger's letter, to be seen in Burnet, vol. iii. Records, No. Ixxvii., he particularly
begins with stating, that he could find nothing to add to what had repeatedly been advanced
upon the subject by Peter Martyr, both while he resided at Oxford, as well as after his retire--
njent to the Continent. " Ad hanc queestionera brevibus tibi respondendum putari, nam brevibus
meara sententiam dicere potui ; dum sciebam beatse memoriae D. Pet. Martyrem et Oxonise et hie
eandem qusestionem tractavisse ssepius et fusius, quibus quod adjicerem non habebam." He does
however in this letter go more largely into the subject, but with singular prudence and judgment.
Mr. Hallarn, in his Constitutional History of England, speaking of the objections of the Helvetic
divines to the habits, does not sufficiently apprise the reader that though they objected, they
recommended conformity. — See pp. 110, 111.
J They wrote also to Beza, who was inclined to take their part, but knowing that the church of
Geneva lay under a cloud, in Elizabeth's eyes, which was not the case with the congregation at
Zurich, he wrote to Bullinger, wishing him actually to send Gaulter to England to assist the
Precisians.
§ Annals, ch. xlii. Repository, No. xxiv. vol. i. part. ii. p. 139. Oxford Edit.
Upon the question of the attire belonging to the service of God, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,
b. ii. ^ 29. should by all means be consulted, and Strype's Life of Grindal, 1566.
|| Sampson and Humphrey, in their first letter to the Archbishop and Commissioners, seem
almost to convict themselves of harbouring such a conscience ; observing, " Before God, what a
bitter grief it was to them that there should be a dissension between them for so small a matter,
as propter lanam et linum, woollen and linen, as they styled the cap and surplice." If the matter
were so small, surely the call upon them to render obedience to the Queen's injunctions, should
have given them a conscience the other way. In this letter they speak of the law, as " restoring
the ceremonies of the Romish Church, joined with the hazard of slavery, necessity, and super-
stition ;" but this is wrong — not discarding what had been in use, is different from restoring ;
356 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
of the Bishops also applied to their friends at Zurich for advice and directions ;
and Bullinger, the Oraculum Ecclesiarum, as Jewel was used to call him,
answered them with great good sense and moderation.
An account both of Sampson and Humphrey (or Humfrey) the vTrspaairioTai,
or champions of the Puritans, as Strype calls them, may be seen in the work
already referred to, ch. xliii. It will there be found that Humphrey, for his great
learning,* was much esteemed by Secretary Cecil, by whose means he was
and as to the hazard of slavery, necessity, and superstition, if obedience to national laws be
slavery and necessity, who can be free from them? Superstition is different: superstition is false
devotion, and may affect the conscience ; but what false devotion could there be in wearing caps,
and hoods, and surplices? Men do not worship these things. They go on to say, " Because this
does not seem so to you, you are not to be condemned by us ; because this does seem so to us,
we are not to be vexed by you." A good maxim enough as a preamble to an act of toleration,
but destructive of all uniformity and regularity where an absolute separation of churches is not
contemplated. And surely no two persons could have been more in the way of marking this
difference, as Heads of Colleges in an University ; where, though the several societies may be
governed by private statutes of their own, with regard to the public statutes of the University,
they are all expected to render a like obedience. There is much learning displayed in the
Better, for they were certainly very learned persons, but they did not keep to the exact point.
The letter may be seen in the Appendix to Strype's Life of Parker, taken from a copy endorsed
by Cecil as follows : " Supplicatio Tho. Sampson, et Laurentii Humfrey ad Arch. Cantuar.
Episcopos London. Wynton. Eliensem, Lincolniensem, 20 Martii, 1564."
In Bullinger's letter, to which we have already referred, there is one passage so exceedingly
good, that we cannot omit transcribing it; it is in answer to the question proposed by Sampson
and Humphrey, " An vestitum cum Papistis communicare liceat?"
Resp : " Nondum constat Papam discrimen vestium induxisse in Ecclesiam, imo discrimen
vestium constat Papa esse longe vetustius. Nee video, cur non liceat vestitu non superstitioso
sed politiore et composite, communicare cum Papistis. Si nulla re cum illis communicare liceret,
oporteret, et templa omnia deserere, nulla accipere stipendia, non uti Baptismo, non recitare
symbolum apostolorum, et Nicaenum, adeoque abjicere orationem Dominican!. Neque vos
mutuatis ab eis ullas ceremonias. Res vestiaria ab initio Reformations nunquam fuit abolita, et
retinetur adhuc non lege Papistica, sed vi edicti regii, ut res media et politica." There is more
to be found of the true history of the English Reformation in this short passage, than in any
other perhaps that could be produced.— Burnet, iii. part 2, No. Ixxvii. We cannot bring
ourselves to think that the reply of our two English precisians to this letter, No. Ixxviii., gives
them any advantage over the discreet Pastor of Zurich. No wonder therefore that the latter
should wish, as he expresses himself, No. Ixxx., to withdraw from such unpleasant, and, as he
calls them, " nunquam terminandis disputationibus." But we must do all the parties the justice
to observe, that the question of the habits only was in the view of Bullinger.
* See, for a list of his writings, Annals, i. part ii. 146.
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 357
ultimately brought to conform, and preferred so highly, as to die Dean of
Winchester in the year 1589. Sampson was equally well known to Cecil: he
had married a niece of Latimers, had received ordination in the year 1550, at
the hands of Ridley, and was known to and esteemed both by him and Cranmer.
In King Edward's time he was Dean of Chichester and Rector of Allhallows,
London. He preached after at Paul's Cross, on the Queen's accession ; and
in 1560, the Deanery of Christ Church being vacant, many eminent members of
that society petitioned Lord Leicester to procure him the appointment, as,a good
man, a great linguist, scholar, and divine. After he had been Dean some time,
in December 1563, Cecil strongly urged him to comply with the habits, telling
him that " he gave offence by his disobedience," and reminding him that
" obedience was better than sacrifice." His long answer to the Secretary,
desiring to be excused, may be seen in Strype \ut supra]. Though he lost the
Deanery, through his pertinacity, he obtained an Hospital in London, called
Whittington College, where, with the assistance of Lord Burghley, he was able
to do much good, and for which, as he wrote to that Lord, all the poor there
prayed for his Lordship ; but we shall have more to say of him hereafter.
The Secretary had great trouble with his own College at Cambridge, St.
John's, where, in the year 1565, many of the young men persisted in throwing
aside their surplices, hoods, &c. : nor were they properly reproved by the master ;
but upon the Secretary's being informed of it, he instantly wrote to them, charging
them with vain-glory, an affectation of popularity, a contempt of the laws, and
a rash desire of innovating ; but to all these remonstrances they pleaded con-
science,* which greatly offended the Queen, and moved the Chancellor to
summon the Head of the College to London, who thereupon, though reluctantly,
recanted.
The Chancellor wrote also at considerable length to his old friend the Bishop
of Ely, visitor of the College, who endeavoured, in that capacity, to restore tran-
quillity, but in vain. Letters were sent up, " written in very unbeseeming
language," as Strype observes, " both to the Queen and the Chancellor ; but by
more thoughtful and prudent persons they were stayed, and a more submissive
* We may guess how far this plea of conscience was available to the purposes of the young
men, when it is recorded as a fact, that one being chid by the Head of his College for appearing
without a surplice in the College Chapel, excused himself by saying that his conscience would
not give him leave to wear one ; whereas it was well known at the time that he had indulged
his palate a little beyond his means, and been obliged to pawn his surplice to the cook.
358 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
address forwarded to Cecil, with many names subscribed, imploring more liberty
to tender consciences ; but the Chancellor was angry to find among the names
that of one of the Heads of the Colleges, who excused himself by declaring that,
for his own part, he wore the habits. But though many grave men in the place
lamented the contentions that had sprung up, they could not be allayed ; and the
London clergy, some of whom had also been called before the Commissioners,
set forth a book entering largely into argument upon all the points in contro-
versy, but which it would be much beyond our purpose to notice further,
as other authors have fully done so; and though scarcely any thing passed
without trouble to the Secretary, and continual appeals to his judgment or
influence with her Majesty, to mediate between the parties,* yet it cannot
be expected that we should enter into a full discussion of the many points
referred to him.f In our first volume, in the reigu of Edward, and in the case
of Bishop Hooper, we took occasion to explain, if not fully, yet sufficiently for
general readers, the grounds of this most unpleasant and tedious dispute ; and
those who wish to go farther into the subject, may assuredly find sufficient
to satisfy their curiosity in the voluminous writings of that generally correct,
diligent, and indefatigable ecclesiastical historian, Strype. Such passages, as
in a more particular manner relate to the Secretary, it will of course be our duty
not entirely to pass over. In 1564, 1565, a dispute arose between Horn,
Bishop of Winchester, and a person we have often had occasion to mention in
our first volume, Feckenham, Dean of St. Paul's, under Mary, and Abbot of the
* The Secretary's part was the more difficult, because he had a private respect for the men, and
they were notoriously upheld by those at Court, who were jealous of the Secretary's influence ;
but that he was in any way disposed himself to encourage their disobedience or non-conformity to
the laws, appears to be a very wrong conclusion ; in fact, when the Archbishop and Bishops drew
up against the dissenting clergy what they modestly called their advertisements, rather than
ordinances (because the Queen was persuaded to withhold her royal sanction for their publication,
though they had been drawn up by her direction), they were set forth by the Archbishop on the
suggestion of Cecil. — See Collier, ii. 496.
f Before the judiciary proceedings in the business, the question of Conformity was amicably
but learnedly discussed between the Archbishop and the two Heads of Colleges. The questions
of the Archbishop, which were previously submitted to Cecil, may be seen in Strype's Life of
Parker, book ii. ch. 23, with the answers of Sampson and Humphrey, and much more to the
purpose ; the Secretary, in all instances, appearing to have been consulted by the Archbishop ;
and, indeed, all the papers from which Strype, and we may add, Collier, made their collections,
seem to have been in Cecil's keeping, being severally indorsed in his own hand-writing. See our
first volume, chap. xxiv.
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 359
new founded Abbey of Westminster. In 1564, Feckenham had put forth,
among his friends, a work on the Oath of Supremacy, which he called a
Declaration. The book had been written in the Tower, where he was a prisoner
during the sitting of the Parliament, in the fifth year of the Queen's reign ;
which book, afterwards, while, according to the mariner of those days, he was in
the private custody of the Bishop of Winchester, he put into the Bishop's hands,
to shew what his opinion had long been upon points on which they disagreed.
This book he afterwards published, adding, however, to the Bishop's great
surprise, what he had not seen before, that it purported to be a declaration of
stays and scruples of conscience, touching the Oath of Supremacy, delivered
unto the Lord Bishop of Winchester. This offended the Bishop, and induced
him to answer Feckenham; which answer was printed in the year 1565. The
Secretary, hearing of the dispute, and of Feckenham's writings, sent for the
latter, which were transmitted to him accordingly, and accompanied with a letter
from Feckenham himself, to be seen in Strype, and 'in which he stated to the
Secretary his own ideas of the dispute. The Bishop had this advantage over
Feckenham, that whatever stays or scruples concerning the Oath' of Supremacy
might influence him at this time, he had certainly been one of those who acknow-
ledged the regal supremacy under Henry and Edward ; but in other points, as
happens in all controversies, each party claimed the victory, for Feckenham
would not yield, but, indeed, conducted himself very strangely and unmannerly,
as the Bishop was obliged to tell him ; for, during one of their disputes, he was
carried so far as to pronounce Jewel, of all people in the world, to be utterly
unlearned, and his book against Harding, published about this time, erroneous,
filthy, and blasphemous. We should not, perhaps, have noticed this dispute, but
to shew how attentive to all such matters, in the midst of other business, the
Secretary constantly shewed himself to be, and how ready all parties were to put
their case into his hands whenever an opportunity was afforded them. Fecken-
ham must have been personally well known to Cecil, having, in the reign
of Edward, been one who carried on a disputation on the subject of the
Eucharist at Cecil's own house, while the latter was Secretary of State, as
we have shewn in our first volume ; and, generally speaking, he was certainly
accounted a " learned and good man," as Camden calls him. We have spoken
in our first volume of his discourses with Lady Jane Grey previous to her
execution.
Another correspondent the Secretary had at this time, who seems to have en-
300 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. {.1565.
tertained an extravagant conceit, or plan, for composing what he called, the
grievous discord and schism in the church ; and he wished to submit a specimen
of his work, " Scopus et finis instituti operis, &c." to his good judgment and
opinion. His project appears to have been no better than a somewhat circuitous
mode of re-establishing the absolute power of the Pope upon the authority of
the Scriptures, but of the plan itself we have nothing to say ; Strype's account,
however, of the author and his acquaintance with Cecil is worth transcribing, as
affording us some light, with regard to former times, and the Secretary's ac-
quaintance with Cardinal Pole.
"One Dominicus Sampsonius, a learned man of Bruges, in Flanders, and
secretary to the Bishop and Prince of Liege, formerly scribe and servant to Car-
dinal Pole in England, writes a letter this year to Secretary Cecil ; enclosing
therein a design of his, for the composition of the present differences in religion;
and to introduce this, he reminded the Secretary, how dear he had been for-
merly both to him and his Lady, as well as to many other learned and good
men here in England, on account of his learning ; and how he, the said Secre-
tary, had, upon the Cardinal's death, endeavoured to persuade him to stay in
England with promise of preferment; and the like had many others done ; and
therefore that he had not departed out of so pleasant a country, and from so
many good friends, had his conscience permitted him to approve of that reli-
gion, in all things that was then set up ; and which the Secretary, he said, in a
very accurate discourse had moved him to embrace, as he himself had done."
At this time many pernicious books began to be sent into England, by the
refugee Papists in Flanders; particularly from Antwerp, where several of the
most active opposers of the English Reformation had taken up their abode, and
where, to give greater spirit and energy to their machinations against the re-
formed, King Philip had given them the support and countenance of a regular
court of Inquisition, upon pretext of the Council of Trent ; though in open vio-
lation of promises on the part of himself, as well as his father, that under no
pretext or colour whatsoever, his subjects in the Low Countries should be bur-
thened with the Inquisition, and in fact, in contempt of all the charters of their
liberty, sanctioned and assured to them by the Golden bull granted to the country
of Brabant in the year 1349, and successively by the Emperors. The alarmed
commonalty and burgesses of the town of Antwerp, being a free people, ac-
cording to the constitution of the country, loudly protested against it, in a sup-
plication addressed to the burgomasters and council of the town. This protest
1565.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 361
is to be seen in Strype, [Annals, vol. i. part. ii. Appendix No. xxxiii.] being, as
he tells us, the very translated copy once belonging to Secretary Cecil, and to
which his own hand is indorsed. — It is short, but strong to the purpose.
We have a curious testimony borne to the zealous protestantism of the Se-
cretary, in the following circumstance, arising out of the death of one Caryl,
attorney of the Duchy Court of Lancaster, a learned and good man but a Pa-
pist ; as most of his profession seemed at this time to be ;* to the great mortifi-
cation, as it would seem, of the celebrated John Hales, who, while Caryl lay on
his death-bed, and to prevent if he could, the appointment of a Popish suc-
cessor, laboured earnestly with the Secretary to procure George Bromley to be
appointed, a good lawyer as he represented him to be, but above all, " as good
a Protestant." " Such men," says he, in his application to Cecil, " of right and
conscience should be remembered, and by all means furthered ;" he knew the
Secretary loved such men, and was desirous to further them ; adding, " that
he should hereby win the hearts of a great many Protestants, who now discou-
raged, would take some hope, if they might hear a Protestant lawyer bore some
authority in Westminster Hall."
The Secretary received also another application about the same time (so
invariably had he become the resort of all parties), from Richard Tracy, Esq.
of a good family in Gloucestershire, to procure him to use his influence with
the Queen, to have the crucifix removed from her closet, which it seems con-
tinued to give great offence to the precise party ; but it had no immediate
effect. The letter may be seen in Strype [Atmals, i. ch. xlvi.] the Queen
however was defended by Calfhil, in answer to Martial, as too well instructed
to fall into any Popish error or idolatry, by retaining the crucifix — she having
no such affiance in the cross, as Martial in his book did fondly teach.
The Dean of Westminster, Dr. Gabriel Goodman, a great friend and favourite
of the Secretary, did this year also apply to him strongly, to procure that no
wrong might be done to the charitable foundation of the Savoy, by a projected
exchange of lands, so common in those days. This also we only mention, to
shew how generally it was the custom at this time, to appeal to the Secretary
in all difficult or doubtful cases.
In Strype's Annals of the Reformation, from which we have taken and
selected many of the foregoing particulars, (for who can have been more
* The Magistrates and Judges, we are told by Camden, continued friendly to Popery.
VOL. n. 3 A
362 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1665.
diligent, or, generally speaking, more correct in such researches ?) we discover
an error, under the year 1565, exceedingly remarkable. In his xlviith chapter,
vol. i. part ii., Oxford edition, the following passage is to be found ; speaking
of Scotch affairs.
" In May or June the two Queens had an interview. They either satisfied
themselves with the interview, or rather filled the desires of their trains. There
were sundry expectations of the fruit thereof; and, as was most commonly used
in Princes causes no small things projected. Queen Elizabeth was now it
seems in her progress in the North." As no authority is cited for this, we are
unable to trace the mistake to its root ; but that the two Queens ever did really
meet, we conceive to be entirely untrue. Nor do we know what is meant by
Queen Elizabeth's progress in the North. Had the projected interview between
the two Queens come to pass, Nottingham Castle appears to have been chosen
as the place of their meeting ; and this indeed seems at one time to have been
so entirely expected, that I have seen among the MSS. in the Museum a paper
endorsed by Cecil, purporting to be " Devises to be shewed before the Queen
at Nottingham, after the meeting of the Queen of Scots." But we cannot
believe that the two Queens did ever really meet, or see each other.
CHAP. VII.
1566.
Eighth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, commenced November 17, 1565.
Pope Pius V. chosen — Order of St. Michael sent to England — David Rizzio and Darnley —
Murray — Randolph — Hazardousstateof England — Character of the Scots — The Lennoxes
— 'Randolph's letter — Marriage of Mary and Darnley — Protestant party low in Scotland
— Copy of the Catholic league sent to Mary — Darnley and Mary on bad terms — Murder
of Rizzio — COIUEUS upon it — Bothwell in favour — Birth of James — Melvil's mission to
England — Elizabeth receives the news from Cecil — Account of Ruxby, Cecil's Spy —
Cecil's letter to him — Ruxby 's letter to Cecil — Rapin's correct account of things — Baptism
of James VI. — Earl of Bedford sent by Elizabeth — Mary a dangerous rival at all times
to Elizabeth — Bothwell in great favour — Darnley goes to Glasgow — 7s sullen and not to
be appeased — State of the Low Countries — Cardinal Granvelle very unpopular — Bra-
banters alarmed — The Queen visits Oxford — Parliament assembled— Proceedings about
the succession — Parliament dissolved — Bull of Pope Pius V. — Account of Saravia.
THE first entry in Lord Burghley's notes for the year 1566 (or to be more
correct, 1565-6), is as follows :—
" Jan. 7. Alexander Cardinalis was chosen Pope, and named Pius Quintus."
The name of this new Pope was Michael Ghisleri : he was the son of a senator
of Milan, and born in the year 1504. His predecessor will always be memo-
rable for the termination of the Council of Trent during his Pontificate, his
confirmation and publication of the decrees of that celebrated Council, and for
the creed which to this day bears his name, and which, having been published
in the year 1 564, in the form of a Bull, is acknowledged, as we before observed,
by the most modern Romanists, to exhibit, at this very time, " an accurate and
explicit summary of the Roman Catholic faith." — [Butler's Book of the Roman
Catholic Church, 1825.] Of Pius V. we shall have more to say as we proceed.
It was nothing in his favour, at the period of his elevation, that he should have
been Commissary-General of the Court of Inquisition at Rome ; and indeed he
never seems to have abandoned the horrid principles of the school he came from.
364 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
On January 11, Lord Burghley notices the arrival of M. Rambouillet, with
the order of France for the Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Leicester.*
This was the order of St. Michael, the " Cockle-shelled" order, as Camden
calls it, from the collar worn by the Knights, consisting of double escallop shells,
fastened with double knotted gold twist, interwoven in the manner of true lovers'
knots, with a medallion representing St. Michael and the Dragon. It was
instituted in 1469, and for more than a century held in high esteem. Elizabeth
is said to have considered this embassy as a high honour, especially as no
Englishman had ever before been chosen into that order, but her father
Henry VIII., her brother Edward VI. ,| and her uncle, by marriage, Charles
Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. She selected therefore among her subjects, as
Camden relates, Leicester as most dear to her, Norfolk as most noble, and they
were regularly invested with it accordingly, in the Queen's Court at Westminster,
after Rambouillet himself had been installed as Knight of the. Garter, in St.
George's Chapel at Windsor, as the representative of his royal master Charles IX.
The order of St. Michael, after this, fell so soon into disgrace, comparatively,
that the Queen herself, we are told, was grieved and mortified to see it. In
Clark's History of Knighthood, published in 1784, it is particularly said to have
fallen into such disrepute, as to be conferred only on artists, physicians, and
magistrates of municipal towns, who sought to obtain it merely for the purpose
of ennobling their descendants.
The next entry of any importance in Lord Burghley's notes, is to the following
effect : —
"March 20. M. David, the Scotts Queen Secretary, slaine in Scotland;"
which naturally brings us back to the affairs of that divided and unhappy
kingdom.
We have already spoken of David Rizzio, but must here enter a little farther
into his history. He was the son of a musician at Turin, and came first into
Scotland in the suite of the Count de Muretto, ambassador to that country,
having a great knowledge of music, he got acquainted with the court musicians ;
and the Queen wanting a bass voice in her concerts, desired the Ambassador to
leave him with her. Having often the opportunity of seeing and conversing
with the Queen, he so insinuated himself into her good graces, that his credit at
Court seemed to increase every day ; and the Secretary of the French dispatches,
* See also a letter from him to Lord Cobham upon the subject. — Hay net, 443.
t See vol. i.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 365
being obliged to return to his own country, Rizzio was appointed to supply his
place. From this time he pushed his fortune so successfully, that he became,
in a manner, first Minister ; nothing of any moment being transacted at Court
but by or through him. Buchanan's insinuations concerning this intimacy are
well known: we are far from wishing to revive them ;* but we have an account
extant, of the excess of his arrogance and familiarity, not well to be disputed.
It is the testimony indeed of Melvil, Mary's own servant and minister, the very
person who endeavoured to convince the Queen of the hazard she ran in giving
him such encouragement, but without effect. The story is too important to our
purposes to be omitted. " As he [Rizzio]," says Melvil,f " entered in greater
credit, so he had not the prudence how to manage it rightly ; for frequently, in
presence of the Nobility, he would be publicly speaking to the Queen, even when
there was greatest conventions of the estates, which made him to be much envied
and hated, especially when he became so great that he presented all signatures
to be subscribed by her Majesty ;J so that some of the Nobility would frown
upon him, others would shoulder and shut him by, when they entered the
Queen's chamber, and found him always speaking with her. All who had
business at Court, addressing themselves to him, and depending upon him,
he soon became very rich ; as he was a known minion, and suspected to be a
pensioner of the Pope,§ it gave ground of suspicion that some design would
be by him contrived against the reformed religion." ||
• See Malcolm Laing's Dissertation on the Murder of Darnley, p. 30, note 8.
f We are aware that Melvil's testimony is disputed, by some who are unwilling to let it stand
in' the way of their own theories ; but we must give up all history if we are expected to yield to
every objection of this nature. Where contradiction exists, we must decide as fairly as we can.
We think Melvil in this instance correct.
J Bishop Grindall, writing to Bullinger at Zurich, Aug. 27, 1566, says, " Perscribitur ad me ex
Scotia, Reginse cum Rege minime convenire. Causa hsec est : fuit Italus quidam, nomine David,
& Cardinale Lotharingo Reginae Scotiee commendatus. Is quutn Reginae a secretis atque intlmis
esset consiliis, fere solus omnia administrabat, non consulto Rege, qui ad modum juvenis et levis
est. Hoc male habebat Regem, Itaque facta consplratione," &c. &c.
$ Strype says (Annals, 1566), he was recommended to Mary by her uncle, the Cardinal of
Lorrain. See Grindal's letter also. It is probable the Cardinal knew that the Pope commu-
nicated with him, and had the French Secretary displaced, to make room for Rizzio in the Queen's
Court or household.
|| We are very accidentally informed of one trait in his character, in a letter from Parkhurst,
Bishop of Norwich, to Bullinger, dated Aug. 21, 1566. He was it seems a necromancer, wizard>
or cunning man, as it was the fashion to call them. The Bishop's words are these : " Italug
366 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
Melvil had been desired by Mary herself to tell her of her faults ; but when
he remonstrated upon this point, it was taken ill ; and when he afterwards tried
to check Rizzio, the latter told him he had the Queen's order to behave as he
was accustomed to do, without minding any thing.
It is surely impossible to deny the extreme imprudence of this conduct on the
part of Mary. It is impossible, one would think, to deny, that Murray* and
all the Protestant Lords, had reason to be disgusted with the officiousness and
insolence of this ignoble foreigner ; but when this pensioner of the Pope, was
seen to be a favourer and abettor of Mary's marriage, with a Roman Catholic
youth of eighteen, the dangers to which they were likely to be exposed must
forcibly have struck them. They remonstrated all they could, against the mar-
riage, but the Queen told them, things were gone too far to be broken off; and
the marriage, as we have shewn, was consummated on the 29th of July, 1565,
and Darnley proclaimed King on the 30th. But in order to understand aright
what passed subsequently to this fatal union, it is quite necessary to revert to
some of the proceedings previous to that event.
Hitherto Mary, directed and supported by the administration of Murray, had
led a life of comparative ease and respectability ; she had rendered herself
popular amongst her subjects, in general ; and Murray, so far from subjecting
her to the austerities of his own Church, had indulged her in a life of gaiety,
exceedingly obnoxious to the clergy of the Calvinistic school ; but the moment
he began to thwart her views of marrying Darnley, he fell into disgrace, and
she soon shewed him, how determined she was to go to extremities, if he and
his party persisted in their objections. Had Darnley been wise, amiable, or
quitlam, vocatus Senior David, necromanticse artis peritus, in magnam gratiam apud Reginam
Scotiae," &cf — Burnet, vol. iii. part 2. Records, No. xci. The Bishop was writing of the death
of Rizzio, and to shew how strangely men's minds were perverted, or hardened, or at least not
softened by refinement, in those days, he thus adverts to one of the name of Black, who was mur-
dered at the same time : " Fraterculus quidam, nomine Black (niger visularius) Papistarum ante-
signanus, eodem tempore in aula occiditur:
Sic NIGER hie nebulo, NIGRA quoque morte peremptus,
Invitus NIGRUM subito descendit in orcum."
This Bishop might surely have spared his puns on such an occasion, but he was of the Knoxian
school, and a bitter adversary to the Church of Rome.
* Murray fell into disgrace with Mary, as Buchanan says, for not paying such attentions to
Rizzio as others of the court did, vol. ii. 300. This is another disputed authority, which however
we cannot bring ourselves always to disregard on that account.
1666.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 367
respectable, things might, perhaps, have taken a different turn, but he very soon
discovered himself to be any thing but wise, or amiable, or even respectable ; his
close intimacy with Rizzio, was quite sufficient to sink him in the estimation of
the Nobles. After he had been little more than four months in Scotland, and
only one month before his marriage, Randolph wrote to Cecil, " People have
small joy in this, their new master, and find nothing but that God must find
him a short end, or them a miserable life ; the dangers of those he now hateth
are great ; but they find some support, that what he intendeth to others may
light upon himself;" and on the 2d of July following, just after the marriage,
'' With my Lord of Murray I have lately spoken ; he is grieved to 'see the
extreme follies of his Sovereign ; he lamenteth the state of the country, that
tendeth to utter ruin ; he feareth that the Nobility should be forced to assemble
themselves together, to do her honour and reverence, as in duty bound ; but
at the same time to provide for the state, that it do not utterly perish: The
Duke, the Earl of Argyle, and he (Murray), concur in this device; many others
are like to join in the same device, what will ensue, let wise men judge."
We know how these passages have been perverted, to implicate Randolph
and Cecil, as being the absolute instigators of all the mischief that ensued, and
if not the original authors, the abettors of the very worst acts, that in the course
of things, were perpetrated by the parties. Randolph, in our own opinion, was
giving to Cecil, as his office called upon him to do, correct information of what he
was in the way to hear and to see. The prospect, indeed, was sufficiently gloomy,
but they must know little of the character of those times, and the state of Scot-
land under the circumstances in which she then stood, who are surprised at
Randolph's representation of the dangers and confusion to be apprehended,
without any furtherance from England ; and why are we bound to interpret the
expressions used to the discredit of Murray? he '" feareth," and " lamenteth,"
the probability of their being driven to extremities, to save their country from
"utterly perishing ;" he speaks of the " honour and reverence" they were " in
duty bound " to pay to the Queen. But, says one remarker upon these pas-
sages,* " how the ruin of the state was to ensue from this marriage, founded to
all appearance upon principles both wise and salutary to the state, and approved
by all good men, is not so easy to be apprehended." This is surely a most
strange remark, if meant to refer to the parties as well as the contract. Knox had
already, in his coarse and severe manner, deprecated the government of " Boys"
» Tytler, vol. i. 373.
368 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
and " Women ;" and though it was pretended by Knox himself, that the appli-
cation had been overstrained, yet, of Darnley's boyhood, as disqualifying him for
the good government of such a kingdom, at such a time, there can be no doubt.
He was not more than eighteen ; and very soon gave proofs of the impetuosity of
his temper, by nearly murdering Lord Ruthven, for having merely hinted to him,
that some delay had been suggested, as to the Queen's conferring on him the
title of Duke of Albany ; he was a Catholic, besides, or quite ready to profess
himself to be such ; and had many family spoliations and injuries to revenge.
Here surely was ground enough for the apprehension of evil, without any stimu-
lation or excitement on the part of England. All this time, it is alleged, Mary
was " the darling of her people, her government being mild and unexceptionable
to all ;" but this surely reflects some credit, at least (though Robertson has been
abused for saying something like it), on Murray, who had been her Minister, and
might or should serve rather to justify his fears of a change, to the disadvantage
of his country, than to convict him of a blind and base pursuit of his own ends.
" The only grievance," says one of Mary's advocates, " complained of by Mur-
ray and his associates, seems to be, that the Queen should think of marrying,
which they foresaw might put an end to that party, in the EtJglish interest, which
Elizabeth cherished and kept up for the purpose of disturbing Mary's Govern-
ment, and of which Murray, for his own private views, was the head."* If a
* It is curious that at this very time, so far from his seeking his own private ends, or the ends
of his party, by thwarting Mary, or interfering with her private inclinations, he was in dire disgrace
with the Clergy, Knox particularly, for being too much devoted to Mary, and servile in his com-
pliances. And this rupture, which, as Robertson observes, is a strong proof of Murray's sincere
attachment to the Queen at that period, continued above a year and a half. It is, however, ex-
tremely difficult to clear the character of any person implicated in the affairs of Scotland at this
time. Notwithstanding the above quarrel, and Murray's indulgence towards Mary in regard to the
mass, and other things, against the will of the Clergy, he is accused by some of being all the
while the instigator of all the attacks upon her, or her religion, by Knox and others, and giving
his support to all their rude speeches against her. And again in regard to Darnley, it has been
said, that his enmity towards him was a plain proof that he aimed at the crown, and had nothing
in view but his own selfish ends. " II ne pouvoit regarder ce manage," says one, " comnie une
folie, que relativement a la ruine de ses interets, et cela seul est une preuve centre lui : Car nul
interet legitime ne pouvoit le rendre ennemi du mari que la reine devoit choisir." (Rech. hist, stir
Marie, p. 181.) To shew how difficult it is to write history, Dr. Cook of Laurencekirk, in his
History of the Reformation in Scotland, gives Murray the credit of having wished the Queen to
marry Darnley, for fear the latter should, by marrying elsewhere, intercept the views that Mary
had upon the crown of England ; instead therefore of seeking to deprive her of one crown, he
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 369
man be so to abandon all private views, on public occasions, as to have no feel-
ing or consideration, for loss of credit, loss of power, and perhaps, loss of life,
then indeed Murray may have been to blame, but having hitherto served Mary
faithfully, he could not be expected very easily to brook the exaltation of such a
youth, to his own immediate depression, and the ruin of the cause he had so anxi-
ously supported. If Murray, standing at the head of his party, is to be sup-
posed to have had nothing in view, but his own private ends of ambition, and
jealousy of Mary, it might be asked, how it happened, that the latter should
have reigned four years in such credit and safety, under Murray's administration,
as to have ingratiated herself with all classes of persons, as her advocates insist,
receiving all the while from Murray himself, all due respect and honour?
Of Murray's dislike to her marriage with Darnley, we might form a different
opinion, if prejudices did not interpose, from another letter of Randolph's, cited
by Mary's advocates, for the very purpose of shewing., that England was privy
to a whole series of " black designs, which lay brooding at the heart of this
bastard brother of the Queen ;" from the first moment that her marriage was
hinted at, " Darnley 's behaviour," says Randolph, in his letter to Cecil of the
2d of July, " is such, as he is run in contempt of all men ; even of those that
were his chief friends ; what shall become of him I know not, but it is greatly
to be feared that he can have no long life among this people." Here we see, that
not Murray only, nor Murray's friends, but Darnley 's own friends and adherents
were so disgusted with his manners, as to quit him with contempt — so much
for the marriage, still alleged to have been " approved by all good men." It is
impossible to deny, that we are now touching upon one of the darkest and most
distressing periods of English history ; we may well wish that England could
have stood clear of the disasters that befel Scotland ; but upon a full view of
the case, we have been regularly brought to the conclusion, that every thing
at home was at stake, from the first moment of Mary's return to her own domi-
nions— that upon the dreadful necessity of upholding a party there, against
was anxious, according to Dr. Cook, to secure to her two. The fact is, Murray did not so much
object to the match, as to the person chosen, after he became acquainted with his character; and
then it is but fair to think, he might have felt for his country, as well as for himself. Dr. Cook in
proof of his assertions has copied a very curious letter from Randolph to Queen Elizabeth, and
which certainly seems to support the conclusions he has drawn, as to the sentiments of Murray
and Lethington, previous to the conference at Berwick ; leaving Elizabeth's own secret purposes
as to the offer of Leicester, as obscure and impenetrable as ever. — See vol. iii. Appendix,
No. xiii. p. xlix.
VOL. II. 3 B
370 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
French ambition and Popish vengeance, depended the security of Elizabeth,
the repose of her kingdom, the stability of her throne, the freedom and happi-
ness of the people, and the permanent establishment of a Protestant Church in
both kingdoms. The smallest advantage gained in Scotland by the two com-
bined interests mentioned above (French ambition and Popish vengeance),
would, at this time, have brought into danger every blessing we have enu-
merated. We may add, for it is certainly another point claiming deep con-
sideration, that the party in favour with England was neither to be abandoned
or offended with impunity. If they were once alienated from Elizabeth, they
were likely not merely to cease to be friends, but to become enemies as well as
the rest of their countrymen.
Randolph was upon the spot, to observe the course of things, and Cecil at
the Court to receive his information ; but it does not follow, that whatever took
place there, was positively directed by English counsels. Darnley's folly and
bad manners, for instance, must have been totally unconnected with any thing
devised by England ; and the alarm excited by those bad manners, in a youth
destined to share the Sovereignty in such very critical times, natural under all
circumstances to every well-wisher to Scotland ; but palpably full of danger to
the whole Protestant party, who soim found that all their remonstrances were
vain ; he and his father had been recalled by Elizabeth as English subjects, and
had declared their determination to continue in Scotland, and in allegiance to
Mary. The case, therefore, became to Murray and his associates desperate, and
we must not wonder at the confusion that ensued. " It is greatly to be feared,"
Randolph wrote, " that he can have no long life among this people.'" The
character of the people did certainly not depend upon England, and we must
remember, that the character of a people is general, including, in such emer-
gencies, all parties. Murray, therefore, was probably in as much danger as
Lennox or Darnley,* and, indeed, it is now known, that he did fall a victim to
* It is surprising to me that the short work of Concent, to which we have often referred, should
have been so much overlooked, in the controversy respecting the events of this period. The
testimony of a Catholic, writing under the Pope's eye, is certainly not to be despised. Now this
author, not only tells us, that Darnley had a design to murder Murray, but that Murray being
advertised privately of his designs, determined to have him (Darnley) murdered, " nc pcrderetur"
that is, lest he himself should be murderedy/c*^. Darnley, it seems, was turned from his purpose,
by the interference of the Queen, which Conceus seems to blame her for, " magno utriiisque dis-
pendio," to the undoing of both ; we apprehend the " ne perderetur," of Conaeus, would explain
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 371
assassination. This proves what the character of the people was, of whom
Randolph was writing ; but the assassination both of Lennox and Darnley, at
this critical moment, it has been positively asserted, had the implied, if not
direct sanction of Randolph and Cecil ; for such is the construction put upon
a passage in a letter from the former. " The question," says he, " has been
asked me, whether if they (Darnley and Lennox) were delivered to us at Berwick
we would receive them ? I answered, we would receive our own in what sort
soever they came in to us." — " That is," exclaim all Mary's advocates, " dead
or alive." This seems so obvious to them, that it is continually repeated, and
even the Reviewers of their works admit the conclusion to be inevitable ; but,
surely the common soil of Scotland would have afforded them a burial place in
case of assassination, without sending their 59ead bodies to be delivered to
Elizabeth's Commissioners at Berwick. The question was, whether if Darnley
and Lennox were delivered to the Commissioners at Berwick, they would be
received by the English ? Yes, said Randolph, we will receive our own
in what sort soever they come in to us. Could they come in as dead corpses ?
In truth, they had both been recalled as Elizabeth's subjects ; they had both
refused to obey the call ; they had virtually renounced their allegiance to
England. Murray and his friends entertained ideas of arresting them,f and
many of the dark deeds of the sixteenth century; as the general struggle seems to have been, who
should be ihejirst victim. — See Conaeus, 77, 78. This alone, perhaps, may be the true explana-
tion of all Mary's sufferings and death, as we expect to be able to shew ; as to the design of
Darnley, Conceits probably took it from Leslie1. Laing thinks it quite destitute of proof, we only
advert to it to shew, how very familiar the idea of murder and assassination appears to have
been to the writers of those times. " Cette espece de Vengeance," says M"'. Keralio, " n'avoit
pas, dans les moeurs de ce temps, tout ce qu' elle presente aujourd' hui de honteux et de lache,"
with much more to the same effect. We ought to add, however, that if Conaeus had any good
authority for what he alleges of Darnley, it might help to clear up some doubts still entertained
as to this portion of the Scottish History. Dr. McCrie in his Life of Knox, vol. ii. p. 193 (note),
has given a very good reason for thinking, that the charge against Murray for conspiring the
death of Darnley was not true, since it was never adduced against him in the Queen's proclama-
tions, or the judgments of the Courts of Scotland ; though lie had charged Darnley with such
a conspiracy against his own life ; and which, indeed, is known to be confirmed by many
authors ; by some indeed Mary has the credit given her of warning Murray of Darnley 's
purposes.
t Murray had been instrumental in bringing them back at the instance of Mary, and no sooner
had Lennox (who was very little wiser than his son) got into favour with the Queen, than he
ente'red into cabals with the Nobles most hostile to Murray.
372 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
sending them back to England, as having stolen away from thence on false
pretences. It required, therefore, to be known, if possible, whether they would
be received at Berwick under such an arrest. Randolph's was a cautious
answer, but we do most confidently believe, that it implied no more, than that
whether they returned voluntarily, or were brought back under arrest, they
would be received — so much for this most foul but often repeated charge of
projected murder or assassination against Randolph and Cecil; we could
almost deduce from Murray's question and Randolph's answer, a deliberate
purpose of saving their lives, if it could be accomplished : we will receive " our
own," for instance, might be some security to them, in reminding those who
seemed to be meditating some personal restraint, or worse, that they were still the
subjects of Elizabeth. Even Chalrhers, Mary's great advocate (and Cecil's as great
enemy), says, p. 139, that the question clearly pointed to the arrest of Lennox
and his son, for the purpose of being delivered to Elizabeth's officers at Berwick.
Randolph's answer then should surely have the same construction put upon it.
Castelnaa asserts, that, after all, Elizabeth wished the match to take place ; see
him cited by Robertson, i. 195. and Robertson himself regards it as one so
unobjectionable to Elizabeth, upon her own principles, as to lead him to con-
clude, that all her objections were affected and delusive. But Mary was about
to marry Darnley in defiance of Elizabeth, in resentment of her procrastina-
tion of matters, and to free him from all subjection to her, even before she
married him.* This mode of proceeding had enough in it to break Elizabeth's
measures. Mary may be excused for acting in the independent manner she
chose to act, but Elizabeth had reason to be angry with the part taken by the
Lennoxes; by Robertson's own account, i. 196, Maitland seems to have dis-
covered this, and to have exercised his own prudence, to obviate the ill effects
of another rash and angry step Mary was inclined to take.
The course of things was bad enough without making them worse by false
charges and uncalled for exaggerations. Mary was undoubtedly about to
* Robertson thinks Murray was deceived by Elizabeth's pretended objections, and under this
deception, was led to form the design of seizing Darnley and sending him as a prisoner into
England, i. 199; but if he be right, in fancying, with Castelnau and others, that the match was
not disagreeable to Elizabeth, how are we to account for Randolph's seeming to sanction the
arrest, if it could have been accomplished. The truth may be as we have shewn, that Elizabeth
at all events, objected to the mode in which the marriage was about to be concluded. The arrest
is said to have been prevented, by Mary's timely removal with Darnley beyond the Forth.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 373
commit herself in a way that might be fatal to the best interests of Scotland ;
there was a chance of getting Lennox and his son cut of the kingdom before the
marriage could take place. Mary knew as little of Darnley's temper and real
character as any of her subjects could know— he had given offence to many of
the latter, in the most imprudent manner possible, considering his views ; and
he had been fostered and encouraged by Mary's equally rash and imprudent
minion Rizssio, a supposed emissary or agent of the Pope. We cannot enter
into every particular of this great Northern disturbance, we are only seeking, in
defence of England and her agents, and particularly her great Minister, Cecil,
to point out such leading and undeniable circumstances of the case, as ought in
all justice to be taken into consideration.
All the projects, however, to hinder or delay this fatal marriage were unavail-
able. The Pope's dispensation was obtained, and the ceremony concluded ;
and immediately afterwards (without the consent of the estates of the king-
dom) Darnley proclaimed King, though in the case of Francis II., the consent
of Parliament had been judged necessary ; and in truth it amounted to a breach
of the Constitution.* Lennox and Darnley escaped all arrest or assassination,
and again Mary triumphed over all who would have stood in her way ; and
had her choice been more wise than it turned out to be, subsequent historians
might have escaped many a dreary, perplexing, and painful labour ; as it is,
we must proceed regularly to the catastrophe we set out with, the death of
Rizzio.
No sooner had Darnley obtained the hand of Mary, and been advanced to
kingly rank and honours, than he began to conspire against Murray, without
whom, neither himself or his father would have been allowed to return to Scot-
land ; he exerted his influence with the Queen, to deprive him of her favour,
remonstrated strongly against her former attentions to him, in the honours and
titles conferred on him, and leagued with those who were his particular enemies,
and equally the enemies of the reformed religion, Lennox (his father), Athole,
and Rizzio. Murray had in fact already alienated the Queen's mind, by
declining to put his hand to any approval of the marriage before the Nobility
had been consulted ; this seems to have obliterated at once all memory of
past services, and afforded a plausible opening for the resentment of Darnley.
—McCrie, ii. 132. See also Robertson, i. 197; where the reasons for
* Randolph, writing of the Proclamation, says, " No man said so much as AMEN, saving his
father, who cried out aloud, God save the King."
374 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
Murray's declining to give his consent to the marriage are very ably and fairly
urged.
Three days after her marriage, Mary summoned Murray again to the Court,
and because he did not choose to put himself in the power of a Court so influ-
enced against him, and expose himself to the vengeance of Darnley, he was
proclaimed an outlaw.* While the Qaeen released Lord Gordon from his
confinement, and restored to him the Earldom of Huntley, recalled the Earl of
Sutherland, and permitted Both well (another great enemy of Murray) to return
to Scotland, every thing, in short, conspiring to prove to Murray the inexorable
resentment entertained against him. The Lords, who, as well as himself, were
dissatisfied with the match and the late proceedings, assembled at Stirling; and
after agreeing to request the protection of Elizabeth, retired to their houses.f
" But the Queen taking the field with all the forces she could collect, they
were at last compelled to arm in their own defence. Even after they were
driven to this extremity, they neglected no means of conciliation ; they pro-
fessed their steadfast loyalty to the Queen ; they declared that they desired
only that the reformed religion should be secured against the dangers to which
it was exposed ; and that the administration should be put into the hands of
those whom the nation could trust ;J and they offered to submit their own
cause to be tried by the laws of their country. But the Queen spurned all
their offers of submission ; refused to listen to any intercession in their favour ;
and advancing against them with her army, herself being in little less than full
military array, obliged them to take refuge in England. "§ — McCne.
* See Robertson on the two conspiracies, i. 200.
+ The most considerable persons who joined Murray, were the Duke of Chatelherault; the
Earls of Argyle, Glencairn, Rothes; Lords Boyd and Ochiltree ; the Lairds of Grange, Cun-
ninghamhead, Balconie, Carmylie, Lawers. Bar, Dreghorn, Pitarrow, Comptroller, &c. — Robert-
son, i. 203.
t Every thing relating to Mary's character ought to be known in a case like the present.
M"c. de Keralio thus speaks of her hasty marriage: " Une passion violente, jointe aux obstacles
opposes (i scs ilesseins, avoit engage, cette princesse i clever Darnley sur le trone."
\ Of the reception these and other fugitives from Scotland met with in England at this momen-
tous period, we have nothing more to say, than once more to refer to the cause they had in hand ;
a cause which, if England had abandoned, in all probability every blessing for which she had
been contending from the days of Henry VIII. (and we may reasonably add, from the very birth
of Cecil), would have been swept away and annihilated ; and there is no saying with how great
a destruction of persons, from the Queen on her throne to the lowest of her natural and loyal
defenders. As to the mummery of making Murray and his associates undergo, as rebels, the
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 375
We have copied this passage without scruple, because in the original it is
accompanied with proper references, and it comprises a good deal in a small
compass. It shews how helpless this party was become in a very short time, and
may serve to connect the hasty proceedings of the Queen, with what we shall
have to relate of her determination, if possible, to root out Protestantism. At
the same time, we must acknowledge it to be a most intricate portion of his-
tory, and one which it is almost impossible to clear up, or thoroughly extricate
from the contradictory representations and strictures of party writers. We must
still refer our readers to the revolutionary struggle on foot throughout Europe,
in order to decide upon the measures adopted by the contending parties. We
cannot possibly hesitate to praise the Queen for her heroic defence of her own
principles, and her own determination in regard to the marriage, but if those
opposed to her must be given up as rebels, another point remains to be deter-
mined ; namely, whether they were traitors to their country. The Queen was
in bad hands, the Protestant Church in danger, the ancient liberties of the
people threatened, and a great probability raised of the kingdom falling back
to Popery and foreign influence, to the exclusion of those most nearly allied to
the throne ; and of Murray particularly, though illegitimate, but who had, as
the Queen's Minister, so carried on the Government since her return to her own
dominions, as to render his sister and Sovereign very deservedly popular ; but
who was now compelled to yield up all authority and interest to a wayward
boy, an upstart Italian, a Popish emissary and agent, and to a deluded female,
surrounded by his immediate enemies, expressly recalled and honoured to
aggravate his fall. — It is wrong, in trying to appreciate the steps taken at this
time by the Queen and her foolish husband on one side, and the confederate
Lords on the other, to forget the country, and the great interests at stake, affecting
the happiness, the honour, and the welfare of Scotland.
penance of a royal reproof before the Ambassadors of France and Spain, the great question
seems to be, how the latter could be satisfied with the scene that passed ? Could Murray, &c.
have separated Mary from her ill advisers, their opposition to her authority might have been
ended soon, but at all events, if resistance to regal power can be justified, Englishmen, of all
people in the world, ought to know that it can only be so when ancient rights and liberties, con-
stitutional privileges, and freedom of thought, are threatened and brought into positive danger.
That such was the state of Scotland at this period, we cannot bring ourselves to doubt ; Elizabeth
had expressed her sentiments to the dissatisfied Nobles in two very able dispatches, July 10, and
September 12, 1.565, cautioning them against rebellion, while they upheld the cause of Protes-
tantism See Turners History, vol. ii. p. 30, 32, notes.
376 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
^
T\\e^departure, however, of Murray and his associates was entirely favour-
able to the views and purposes of Mary ; while her marriage was in doubt, she
had tampered with the Reformed ministers, conferred with them, attended
their sermons occasionally, and expressed herself desirous of learning the truth
at their lips ;* she had induced Darnley, who also went to mass, to be present at
some of their sermons ; but when the marriage had been concluded, and the
Protestant Lords expelled, she lost no time in letting the Commissioners of the
Church know that she neither could nor would ever depart from her religion.
The King openly professed himself a Catholic, and joined in some of their most
superstitious and peculiar ceremonies. Friars were appointed to preach at
Holyrood House, and the Reformed ministry had every occasion given them to
feel disheartened, if not in absolute danger; their situation appeared so alarm-
ing that the General Assembly thought it expedient to enjoin a fast, the reasons
for which they required Kno.v to set forth, in a public treatise or admonition to
the people ; and he executed the task assigned to him with great clearness and
precision ; he dwelt largely on the decree of the Council of Trent, that all
Lutherans, Calvinists, and such as are of the new religion, shall utterly be
rooted out ; he shewed how the decree had been begun to be put in execution
already in France, and how much all were expected to pay homage, as of old, to
the Roman idol ; opportunity only being wanting for them to finish their work.
As if it had been designed to confirm all that Knox had insisted upon, in the
beginning of February, 15CG, at a time when Mary was beginning to relent
in regard to the exiles, and to be disposed to recall them, on the advice of
Sir N. Throckmorton (in opposition, it has been said, to Cecil ft but why so, we
cannot exactly see), a messenger arrived in Scotland from the Cardinal of
Lorrain,J with a copy of the Catholic League for extirpating the Protestants,
and instructions to obtain the Queen's subscription to it, and to urge the pro-
priety of adopting the most rigorous measures against the exiled or expelled
Nobles. § Mary, who was, as Robertson has said, deeply tinctured with all the
* See, as to her earnestness in endeavouring to reconcile her subjects generally to the match,
Robertson, i. 198. " In no scene of her life," says he, " was ever Mary's own address more
remarkably displayed." f Robertson, i. 210.
{ It was, in fact, the same M. Rambouillet sent to invest the Duke of Norfolk and Leicester
with the order of St. Michael, and who had afterwards brought t' e same to Darnley.
§ As we read of nothing so much at this time as the hypocrisy and dissimulation of Elizabeth,
it may not be am ss to copy what Mad"e. de Keralio says, of this mission of M. Rambouillet.
1566.J MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 377
prejudices of Popery, and devoted to her bigoted uncles of Lorr^in, whose
advice she constantly viewed with a degree of filial respect, scrupled not to set
her hand to this exterminating league ; and having done so, she began to act
upon it by summoning Murray and his associates to appear before the Parlia-
ment in March. The Popish Ecclesiastics were restored to their places in
Parliament, the Lords of the Articles selected according to the Queen's choice,
from among the Papists, and open preparations made for restoring the Catholic
worship. Rambouillet, was by no means the only person commissioned to
make Mary a party to the proceedings at Bayonne; having often cited Madlle. de
Keralio, as a writer partial to Mary, we shall add what she has written of these
French envoys or messengers : " II etoit present a ces envoyes d' empecher
Marie Stuart de pardonne,<- aux reformes; on 1' instruisoit des conferences de
Ba'ionne ; on la pressoit de se reunir aux destructeurs de la religion pretendue
reformee, et on 1' exhortoit a ne pas souffrir dans ses etats une religion qu' on
alloit aneantir dans toute 1' Europe. On employoit pour la seduire tout ce qui
pouvoit agir sur 1' esprit d' une princesse jeune, foible, et attachee a sa religion.
Son ancienne deference aux conseils de la maison de Lorraine, son respect pour
F archeveque de Glasgow, le desir de se rendre agreable a Dieu, 1' orgueil
d' avoir contribue a retablir son culte d?ns toute son integrite, le plaisir
d' abaisser ses enemies, tout concourut a imprimer dans son ame dc fatales
resolutions. Les sages avis de Melvil furent oublies, et ceux de Throgmorton
negliges." Surely these bad friends ought to be numbered amongst Mary's
worst enemies. That Mad"°. de Keralio herself thought so, is plain from the
following passage : " Tout sembloit cependant promettre a Marie des jours
plus heureux et une reputation glorieuse, lorsque le genie de Catherine de
Medicis vint repandre sur cette princesse le poison de ses conseils et la pre-
cipiter dans un abime de maiLr."
But by this time the King and Queen had ceased to live upon good terms ;
and the wayward passions of Darnley had prepared him for some desperate
revenge on the minion Rizzio, whom he suspected of interfering to hinder his
views of obtaining the matrimonial crown. It may be quite impossible to
" Catherine de Medicis avoit voulu, par un hommage flatteur, eblouir la reine d' Angleterre, et
detourner ses regards du complot forme aux conferences de Bayonne," [where the extirpation of
heresy and heretics was fully agreed upon.] " Elisabeth," she proceeds to say, " n'ignoroit pas
qu' elle travailloit a la perte des Protestans ; mais quel homme pouvoit prevoir 1' horrible evene-
ment qu' elle meditoit?"
VOL. II. 3 C
378 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
ascertain the precise steps that led to this catastrophe. There can be no doubt
that the ill-judging Italian, by too great a boldness and presumption upon all
occasions, but especially in the Queen's presence, had disgusted not only the
Nobles, but the people ; there can be no doubt that his counsels (however
friendly to Mary) tended to the overthrow of the Protestant religion, and,
to a signal vengeance on the fautors of the new faith. Ruthven, Morton,
Lindsey, and Maitland, Murray's former associates, had not stuck by him in his
opposition to the marriage, but having many family connexions with the new
King, had continued with the Court ; till finding their credit declining, and
attributing to Rizzio the disgrace and exile of their former leader, Murray,
and suspecting that he would be an obstacle to his return, they determined
to abridge his power if they could. It is said that they wished to brino- him
to a regular and public trial,* but that Darnley's impetuosity, stimulated by
insinuations calculated to excite his jealousy, hurried matters on, and determined
him to have him seized in the Queen's presence. (See Keith and Laing).
He was prepared even, it has been asserted, to strike the fatal blow himself.
The story of his death is so well known, that it need not be enlarged upon
in this place. It was altogether perhaps as atrocious an act as could have
been perpetrated ;f but that the object was to procure Mary's abortion, that no
child might be born to the interruption of Murray's designs upon the crown,
is more than we are at all prepared to acknowledge. Lord Ruthven asserted,
* It is said cords were prepared to bang him ; and certainly cords there were ready in the
palace, as appears from the Queen's letter to Archbishop Beton, and from the escape of Huntley
and Bothwell, mentioned below.
t The persons concerned in it were perhaps, according to modern notions, the last to be expected
to embark in such an enterprise. Morton, the Lord High Chancellor of the Kingdom ; Maitland,
who had been Secretary of State ; and Ruthven, who being just recovered from a dangerous illness,
and who actually committed the deed (clad in complete armour), needed two men to support
him to the palace to commit the murder, on account of his weakness and feeble state of
body. Morton and Ruthven fled into England; while Murray and the other banished Lords
returned. We are sorry to say, these most unjustifiable measures were judged necessary to the
upholding of the Protestant cause. Goodall does not see how the death of Rizzio could be
connected with this, as insisted upon unwarily by Knox. But if he were a secret agent of the
Pope, and had ensured an influence in the approaching Parliament against the Protestant Lords,
which the Queen's own letter beems to admit, Knox might be right in thinking that had he lived,
and the Parliament taken effect, " the true Protestant religion would have been wrecked, and
Popery erected." This is no vindication of the dreadful outrage by which these evils seem to
have been averted.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 379
that it was not intended to be done in the Queen's presence. The probability
of such consequences ought certainly to have prevented such an outrage * in
such a place ; but by whatever means the King's passions had been worked up
to such a pitch of frenzy, it seems probable that the haste and indelicacy with
which the deed was perpetrated, arose from the King's impatience to seize
upon the first good opportunity that presented itself ; and especially to surprise
the Queen herself in her private amusements, to which, with only a few
others, Rizzio was too constantly admitted. The deed was certainly, in its
circumstances, as foul and barbarous a deed as could have been committed,
whether it were the act of Papists or of Protestants ; but we cannot resist
noticing one extraordinary attempt to cast the blame exclusively upon the latter,
as though it would have been impossible for any Papist, even in those days, to
commit a deed so base and sanguinary. Conseus, whom we have before had
occasion to cite, in his Vita MaricE StuartcE, not contented to represent the act as
one most barbarous and ferocious, as every person must acknowledge it to have
been who has the least degree of feeling, tells Pope Urban VIII., for whom the
book seems to have been written, that it was, in short, so base, so barbarous,
and so inhuman, that none but heretics (meaning thereby the Reformed party
in Scotland) could have committed so atrocious a deed. " Nusquam nisi apud
h&reticos audito facinore." Which in fact makes it stronger, as vouching for
no similar atrocity having ever been heard of nisi apud fuzreticos, which in
plain terms, as applicable to' those days, means except among Protestants. As
the very book we transcribe from was published at Rome not very long after
Elizabeth's death, and not more than half a century subsequent to the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, the author probably may have been living at the time of
that most murderous destruction, of which we shall have much to say hereafter,
not of Catholics by the hands of Heretics, but of Protestant Heretics by the
hands of Catholics. A deed commended, rejoiced in, and even celebrated with
a jubilee by Pope Gregory XIII., one of Urban's predecessors; commemorated
also by a medal, that a deed so meritorious might not easily be forgotten, having
on one side the effigy of the Pope, and on the other the exterminating angel
* The haste with which the deed was done, was occasioned by the necessity that arose for
preventing the sitting of the Parliament; and it is probable, that they expected to find Huntley
and Bothwell in the room as well as Rizzio ; both of whom were in the palace, and only escaped
by letting themselves down by a cord from a back window. — Goodall.
380 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
striking the unhappy Hugonots or Protestants, with this inscription below, or
around it — Hugonotorum Strages, 1572.
Every historian, who attempts to unravel the transactions of the sixteenth cen-
tury, may at every turn expect to meet with records of this description ; there is
scarcely one contemporary writer that deserves to be trusted ; at the very time
referred to, of Rizzio's murder, Darnley himself (though the deed was done by Pro-
testants, much to their shame) was a professed Papist ; and it has been alleged
by some, as we have shewn, that the murder was more owing to his impatience
and impetuous passions,* than consistent with the original design of the offended
Nobles. But we may have done for the present with this disgusting scene.
The Protestants ought to bear the blame of it, but not as of a deed of such
unparalleled wickedness f and cruelty as Concern pretends ; who wrote his book,
as we have already observed, not long after the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
We cannot wonder that Mary should be extremely incensed at the indignity
offered her, and at the bloody deed executed, as turned out to be the case, in her
very presence, and certainly at the hazard of her own life,J though that was
probably not so much thought of, as some have pretended ; but she was now
apparently fallen again into the power of those whom she had so much slighted.
Several of the Catholic Lords fled from the palace in alarm. Murray imme-
diately returned ; and though she would willingly have procured him, if she
could, to consent to the punishment of the offenders, yet Murray had been too
much connected with them, not to intercede in their favour, and the King had
* It has been said that he offered to strike the first blow, and it seems to be certain that his
dagger was found sticking in the body of the murdered Secretary. But this has been accounted
for as the act rather of Douglas ; and the probability seems to be, that the King himself was not
actually one of the slayers of the unfortunate Rizzio.
+ See Robertson's remarks on the frequency of assassinations at this period, book iv. anno
1566 ; and the surprising coolness with which the very conspirators were afterwards known to
speak and to write of " David's slaughter."
I Mary is said to have threatened Ruthven with the vengeance of all her foreign friends, the
King of Spain, the Emperor, the French King, the Pope, many Italian Princes, and particularly
of her uncles of Lorrain. She is also said to have uttered the following passionate exclamation,
" I shall forbear to weep, I shall think of nothing but revenge;" had she said so, who could
have blamed her? Never was any woman placed in so cruel a situation; but those who have
compared the different accounts extant of this sad murder, seem to us to have very fairly
decided that she used no such words.— See the note in the Hist, of M"e. Keralio, who refers to
many authors.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 381
clearly implicated himself with them, in the perpetration of the deed ;* the Queen,
however, by good management, soon found herself able to detach Darnley from
his new associates, and retiring with him to Dunbar, they were soon joined by
Huntley and Bothwell; from thence she advanced towards Edinburgh, at the
head of eight thousand men, and to separate Murray from the conspirators,
promised an ample indemnity to his associates, and received him into favour,
while the latter were compelled to pass the frontiers, and take refuge in New-
castle, where Ruthven soon died.f Morton was the greatest sufferer amongst the
survivors ; deserted by the King, and apparently by Murray and his party, he
was compelled to relinquish his high office, and abandon his great property.
But the King, undoubtedly, had so grossly committed himself upon this occasion,
as to betray all the weakness of his understanding, the strength of his passions,
and the ferocity of his disposition. The Queen wept at the discovery of the
folly she had committed in marrying him, and did all she could, by neglect, to
lessen and abridge his power.
As the King sank in her esteem, Bothwell rose. The latter seemed to be a
complete contrast to the former ; active, wise, and enterprising, he watched his
opportunities of assisting Mary, when she stood most in need of help, and
managed to lay her under obligations to him, which were rewarded with the
strongest marks of her gratitude and bounty.
But the time of Mary's delivery was approaching, and the Council suggested
the propriety of her fixing her residence in the strong castle of Edinburgh.
The Queen seized upon the occasion, as a fitting opportunity for the reconcilia-
tion of the divided Nobles ; and she had the satisfaction of allaying, as she pro-
bably flattered herself, all the discords between Murray and Argyle, Huntley and
Bothwell. On the 19th of June, 1566, her only son, James, was born, who
lived to unite the two crowns of England and Scotland, after a whole century
of disturbance and confusion; but before the event just mentioned came actually
to pass, it is but too well known, how many dismal scenes the unfortunate
* Darnley afterwards pretended to exculpate himself, as quite ignorant of the purposes of the
murderers, but how came he not to suspect Ruthven's appearance in complete armour, when he
conducted him by a private staircase to the Queen's apartment? We confess, we cannot feel
surprised, that, as Buchanan states, Darnley's proclamation to this effect (on which, however,
Goodall seems to rely), was treated with laughter and derision. — See Goodatt, i. 280. 285.
f " On this, as on former occasions," says Laing, " the same vigour, spirit, and resolution, are
discernible in her conduct, and she suppressed a conspiracy of the most subtle statesmen, by her
consummate prudence, art, and address."
382 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
mother had to go through, and how little comfort she ever derived from the royal
infant just born into the world. It is quite necessary to proceed with the history,
but we shall endeavour to be brief, and rather give a summary of our own convic-
tions, than dive too deeply into a controversy, the most endless and unsatisfac-
tory, perhaps, that ever arose, to perplex the minds and harass the feelings of
mankind. To form as correct a judgment as we could, of transactions, in which
the name of the subject of this Memoir appears so often, we have perused book
upon book and treatise upon treatise, with little hope of ever reconciling facts,
so clearly, as to be able to advance a positive decision, on many points of the
inquiry ; we can therefore only state the most undisputed, and generally ad-
mitted facts, throwing in occasionally such remarks as may appear to be abso-
lutely called for, in explanation at least of many of the measures adopted for
the safety of Elizabeth's person, and the security of England ; these being, as
we most confidently believe, the invariable and constant objects of Cecil's admi-
nistration— a divided administration at the best, but to all appearance most
strong when his prudence, wisdom, and foresight, were most attended to, and
suffered to have their freest course.
Mary had no sooner become a mother than care was taken to announce the
event in due form to Elizabeth, and, as we have the account of the mission from
the very person dispatched, it would be wrong not to transcribe his own state-
ment of facts.*
" All the while I lay within the castle of Edinburgh, praying night and day
for her Majesty's good and happy delivery of a fair son. This prayer being
granted, I was the first who was thereof advertised by the Lady Boin, in her
Majesty's name, to part with diligence the 19th of June, 156G,t betwixt ten and
eleven in the morning-. By twelve of the clock I took, horse, and was that
night at Berwick. The fourth day after I was at London ; and did first meet
with my brother Sir Robert, who, that same night, sent and advertised Secretary
Cecil of my arrival, and of the birth of the Prince, desiring him to keep it quiet
till my coming to Court, to .shew it myself unto her Majesty, who was for the time
at Greenwich, where her Majesty was in great mirth, dancing after supper.^
' It must be recollected, that though such passages have been cited and transcribed, and
perhaps read again and again in other works, they could not well be omitted in a Life of Cecil,
from the part he bore in all the transactions recorded.
t 1565 in Melvil by mistake.
J She had been, not long before, dangerously ill.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 383
But so soon as the Secretary Cecil whispered in her ear the news of the Prince's
birth, all her mirth was laid aside for that night ; all present marvelled whence
proceeded such a change ; for the Queen did sit down, putting her hand under
her cheek, bursting out to some of her ladies, that the Queen of Scots was
mother of a fair son, while she was but a barren stock. The next morning was
appointed for me to get audience ; at what time my brother and I went by
water to Greenwich, and were met by some friends, who told us how sorrowful
her Majesty was at my news ; but that she had been advised to shew a glad and
cheerful countenance : which she did, in her best apparel, saying, that the joy-
ful news of the Queen her sister's delivery of a fair son, which I had sent her
by Secretary Cecil, had recovered her out of a heavy sickness which she had
lyen under for fifteen days. Therefore, she welcomed me with a merry volt,
and thanked me for the diligence I had used in hasting to give her that welcome
intelligence."
So far may be regarded as the first act of this miserable farce, beginning,
however, probably, with a scene from nature — we mean, the mortified feelings
of Elizabeth at receiving intelligence of one who might become her heir, with,
apparently, an accumulation of titles to the crown she wore, and which, per-
haps, she knew better than any about her Court, would never descend to a son
of her own ; for, of her own private determination not to marry, there can
scarcely be any doubt : nothing less, in all likelihood, could have prevented
her accepting some of the many proposals made to her, or selecting from her
many favourites at home a partner for her bed. What she felt, therefore, upon
the first communication made to her by Cecil, had, probably, in it more of
mortification than envy ; at all events, certainly, no real joy, however it might
be pretended, to comply with courtly forms.
The next act of the farce is now to follow. " All this she said before I had
delivered to her my letter of credence. After that she had read it, I declared how
that the Queen had hasted me towards her Majesty, as one whom she knew of
all her friends would be most joyful of the glad news of her delivery, albeit dear
bought with the peril of her life, she being so handled that she wished she had
never been married."
Now we may very well venture to assure ourselves that Mary did never really
believe what Melvil told Elizabeth she did believe, nor that such were the
motives for her dispatching Melvil to the English Court in so great haste. As
to her hard labour, and wish that she had never been married, this tell-tak
384 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1565.
Minteter has been^at the pains to explain this himself in the following passage :
"This I said, by the way, to give her a little scar from marriage; for so
my brother had counselled me, because sometimes she boasted to marry the
Archduke Charles of Austria, when any man pressed her to declare a second
person : then I requested her Majesty to be a gossip to the Queen, to which she
gladly condescended. Your Majesty, said I, will now have a fair occasion to
see the Queen, whereof I have heard your Majesty so oft desirous.* Whereat
she smiled, saying, that she wished her estate and affairs might permit her." In
this again we may look for some truth. Elizabeth might wish to be godmother
to the new heir of the Scottish race, whose claims to the succession she seems,
from many circumstances, to have privately, and in the secret counsels of her
heart, to have approved. That she would have wished to see Mary, we can
also believe, if such an interview could have been rendered in any manner safe,
prudent, ^nd agreeable to both parties. " In the meantime," Melvil continues,
" she promised to send both Honourable Lords and Ladies to supply her room."
And this she was punctual to perform. In the meanwhile the French King and
the Duke of Savoy, uncle to Francis II., were also solicited to be sponsors at the
christening of the young Prince.
Before we proceed to give an account of the ceremonies of this royal baptism,
it seems incumbent on us to notice a circumstance in which the name of Lord
Burghley has been made to stand so prominent, that to pass it by might appear
as if we were wilfully inattentive to it ; we allude to the manoeuvres (for such
they certainly were) of Ruxby (Cecil's spy, as it is usual to this day to call him),
in Scotland, and in communication with the Queen herself.
We must begin with observing, that in an age of such subtle intrigue and
dark designs, those otherwise hateful agents, spies, were, as near as could be, in-
dispensably necessary. There was not, perhaps, during the whole of the sixteenth
century, a kingdom, a court, or even a city, that was free from them. They may
be said, perhaps, to have had a regular beginning, when the institution of the
Jesuits first took place. As the Roman Pontiff, extravagant as his pretensions were
in general, could not invade the attributes of the Deity, he had no other means of
being omnipresent and omniscient but by availing himself of the eyes and obser-
vations of others : he had no other means of penetrating the hidden purposes of
man's heart but by the assumption of disguises and concealed approaches. It is
' This may serve to prove the strangeness of the mistake already noticed in Strype's Annals,
where it is said, that in May or June of the year 1565, the two Queens had an interview.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 385
melancholy to have to speak of such things as necessary ; it is not possible,
perhaps, thoroughly to excuse them, under the name of political expediency, but
as a defence against threatened but unknown evils, and premeditated, though
concealed, mischief, their employment may admit of palliation ; especially if it
can at all be shewn that there was more in them, with regard to England, of
counterplot than plot. Ruxby, as we have said, is generally spoken of as
Cecil's spy : our inquiries, therefore, are naturally directed to the ascertaining
whether at the same time there were not spies at work in England, watching
their opportunities of disturbing the government of that country by their intelli-
gence, quite as much as any thing Ruxby could be contemplating or practising
in Scotland. We shall endeavour to relate the case as briefly and plainly as
we can, and leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusions.
A writ of execution, for debt, being out against Ruxby in England, he found
it prudent to get as soon as possible beyond the borders, and s&gk shelter in
Scotland. On his way thither, he stopped first at the house of Mr. Lassells,
his wife's brother, a person friendly to Mary's cause, who conferred with him
much on her pedigree and undoubted right to the crown of England, and so
sent him forward on his journey, with letters of introduction to Mary, having as
he thought brought him over to, or fixed him in her interests ; but passing further,
he took up his abode with another friend, " a dere frend," he calls him, Sir
Henry Percy ; he, it seems, " a lytyl musynge of" the part he was about to take,
under the advice of Lassells, not only saw the danger he was incurring c
becoming a confederate against Elizabeth, but the opportunity that presented
itself of his doing the latter, his rightful Sovereign, particular service. That
is, in short, by availing himself of Lassell's introduction so far, as to have com-
munication with Mary, and then to inform the English Court of what he might
discover of her designs and purposes; a most treacherous and deceitful project
undoubtedly, to say the least that can be said of it. So far, however, not Cecil
but Ruxby 's two friends are the most responsible, and the only question touch-
ing the Secretary is, whether in an age of such incessant intrigue and under-
hand doings, he was justified in availing himself of the information Ruxby
might pick up, to the better protection and surety of Elizabeth, against the
machinations of the Scotch Queen and her friends ? The truly watchful States-
man must be excused endeavouring, by almost any means, to penetrate the
secret designs of an adverse court, before they become ripe for execution, and
we may see from the letters, both of Ruxby and Randolph, in Haynes, what
VOL. n. 3 D
38(5 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
designs were found to be on foot, demanding the immediate attention of Cecil,
as the known supporter of the crown on the head of Elizabeth. We ought,
however, perhaps, to notice first the following passage in the Secretary's letter
to Ruxby (or Rooksby), dated from the court at Greenwich, June 16, 1566.
" Mr. Ruxby, since I understand of your repayre into Scotland, I did much
pitie your case, thinking at the first, that Lack and Det had dryven you out of
your contre ; but since I have utherwise heard out of Scotland of your dealing
with the Queen ther in other gret matters, I am very sory that you do bestow
your time so fondly, lykely to bring yourself into danger ; wherefore of ould
acquaintance and frendschippe, I am bold to warne you to staye in good Tym,
and not to run hedlong to your own destruction." — After this caution, he does
not certainly refuse his services, in any manner tending to the welfare of
Elizabeth, desiring him to communicate with Killegrew, then also in Scotland,
or about to be sent thither.*
Ruxby 's letter to Cecil is very long, but some parts of it must be transcribed,
in order to shew what was, or might be, passing in England at the same time.
After giving the account we have already stated, of his passage into Scotland,
and of his interviews with Lassells and Percy, he proceeds as follows (we shall
modernise the language) : —
" So I parted from Sir Harry, and came to Edinburgh, where I sent for
James Melvyn, and after some talk with him, I gave him a letter from Mr.
Lassells to the Queen. And the next evening after ten o'clock was I sent for
in a secret manner to speak with the Queen ; and being carried into a little
closet in Edinburgh Castle, the Queen came to me; and so doing the duty
belonging to a Prince, I did offer my services, and with courtesy she did receive
me, and said, I should be welcome to her, and so began to ask me questions of
news from the Court of England, and of the Queen, and of the Lord Robert,
with divers other questions. I could say little, for I had not been at the Court
a year before. So being very late, the Queen said she would next day confer
with me in other causes, and willed me take my ease for that night, and com-
manded Melvyn see that I were entertained, and to want nothing ; so departed
for that time.
" The next night after, was I sent for again to the Queen, arid brought
* Killegrew had it in Commission, by way of getting Ruxby safe out of Scotland, to demand
him as an English fugitive — a rebel and a Papist, but Mary was beforehand with him ; having
caused him to be seized with all his papers.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 387
secretly to the same place, where the Queen, she sitting down on a little coffer
without a cushion, and I kneeling beside, she began to talk of her father,
Lassells, and how she was much beholden to himyfor he had travelled to get
her a true Pedigree of her title to the Crown of Er^land ; and how she trusted
to find friends in England, when so ever time did serve, and did name Mr.
Stanley, Harbert, and Darcy, from whom she had received letters ; and by
means she did make account to win friendship of many of the Nobility ; as the
Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Derby, Shrewsbury, Northumberland, West-
moreland, Cumberland ; she had the better hope of these, for that she thought
them all to be of the old religion, which she meant to restore again with all
expedition, and thereby win the hearts of the common people. Besides this,
she practised to have two of the worshipfull of every shire of England, and such
as were of her religion, to be made her friends, and sought of me to know the
names of such as were mete for that purpose : I answered and said, I had little
acquaintance in any shire of England, but only Yorkshire ; and there was great
plenty of papistry.
" She told me she had written a number of letters to Christopher Lassells
with blank superscriptions, and he to direct them to such as he thought meet
for that purpose. She told me, as she had received friendly letters from divers,
naming Sir Thomas Stanley, and one Harbert, and Dacres with the crooked
back. Thus meaning, that after she had friended herself in every shire of
England with some of the worshipfull or of the best countenance of the country,
she meant to cause war be stirred up in Ireland, whereby England might be kept
occupied ; then she would have an army in readiness, and herself with her
army to enter England ; and the day she should enter, her title to be read,
and she proclaimed Queen ; and so certain of every shire to repair unto her for
her better assistance, being entered the land to take possession of her own; and
for the better furniture of this purpose, she had before travelled with Spain,
with France, and with the Pope for aid, and had received fair promises with
some money from the Pope, and more looked for.
" After she had made me privy to all these purposes, she asked me what I
thought of them ; and I seemed to like well of them, and shewed myself ready
to do any thing that her Grace would direct me. Then said she, I would fain
do for the best, for, saith she, the soothsayers tell us that the Queen of England
shall not live three years ; and now is there good love arid i'uvour between our
good sister and us ; and if we would let our sister be in res'; for her time, she will
388 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
be content that we shall have it after, and we had rather come to it with quietness
than otherwise. What, saith she, think ye best ? Madam, said I, the matter is
great, take advice of your wise counsel. She answered, that she durst make no
more of counsel but my Lord Bodwell, and the Lord Arskyn [Erskine], who
had the keeping of Edinburgh Castle, James Melvyn, and myself; and so willed
me to confer further of these causes with the Lord Bodwell, whom, I might well
perceive, was in more secret favour with her than any other. And thus having won
myself into credit, I gave intelligence to Sir Harry Percy : and then Mr. Kille-
grew came to Edinburgh, with whom I had secret conference. I made him to
understand all these practices, and he seemed to be very glad, and willed me to
write them all of my own hand, and he would enclose them in his letters to the
Secretary of England, whereby I might deserve the thanks ; and, thereupon I
wrote as many things as I had knowledge of : and, as I could find convenient
time to get them to Mr. Killegrew, was my chamber searched, and all my
writings taken and carried to the Queen, and I brought before the Council, and
straitly examined what intelligence I had given to England : I said, none ; and
confessed I meant to have done, for they had my writings.* Then would they
* "What he learned for the time," says Melvil, " I cannot tell ; but he did write sundry intel-
ligences unto the Secretary Cecil, which did prejudice : but this fine contrivance was not so
secretly kept, but my brother Sir Robert had knowledge thereof, and also of a letter that the
Secretary Cecil wrote again unto Scotland to the said Mr. Ruxbie, promising to see him rewarded,
and desiring him to continue his diligence; of all which my brother had such good advertise-
ment, that, in due time, he gave her Majesty and me information thereof. The consequence was,
he was immediately apprehended with all his writings, and when Killegrew in the name of Elizabeth
demanded him to be sent back, not knowing that they had, by apprehending him, got possession
of all his secrets, she, with some humour, replied, that to satisfy the Queen her good sister
(Elizabeth) she had caused him to be seized, and would give him up as soon as her good sister
should please to send for him." Mary was advised to dissemble her knowledge of Ruxby's com-
munications, so that when Melvil visited the English Court, he told both Eliza'jeth and Cecil that
he had been taken up merely on Elizabeth's complaint against him, and, that as Killegrew had
insinuated, that she had tampered with O'Niel, he declared that Mary had no dealing with him.
" Her Majesty (i. e. Elizabeth) seemed," says Melvil, " to be well satisfied with the matters of
Ireland, and concerning Mr. lluxbie, but she forgot to send for him." This is truly a very
humourous account of an otherwise grave matter. Elizabeth, perhaps, by this time, knew the
truth, through all Melvil's disguises ; however, he got a fair chain for his trouble, and returned to
Scotland, fully instructed by his brother how to carry on the joke. But we must be contented to
refer to the book itself.— See his Memoirs, 141,2,3, &c. One thing only must be added, as particu-
larly applicable to the subject we are now upon. The very first article in Sir Robert's instructions to
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 389
needs know how I came to the knowledge of such matters, and they being of
the Queen's Council, and they not privy to any such thing ; they would no
way, but I dealt with some familiar ; for there was none of them knew that
I had any conference with the Queen. Then did they earnestly desire to know
whether I had given intelligence of these things to Ireland or no ; and I said,
no ; but I meant to have done, as might appear by my writings which they had.
So was I sent to Spayne Castle, with strait charges given to the Captain that
no message should either come to me, or go from me ; and so I remained a
prisoner a year and three quarters."
Such was the purport of Ruxby's account of his proceedings in Scotland.
They were treacherous enough, certainly, horribly so for any other times, but
the information he obtained is well calculated to shew, that Elizabeth and her
great Minister were not the only practisers at the time, but that Mary had her
engines at work as covertly in England, as any Elizabeth could have in Scotland:
nay, the very next letter, in Haynes's Collection from Randolph to Cecil, dated
June 17th, 1566, and addressed "To Mr. Secretarie selfe, and onlie for himselfe,"
is a very curious counterpart of the complaints against Ruxby. For, in it he gives
Cecil information that much confusion had arisen in Scotland, and much blame
had been imputed to him by the Earls of Argyle and Murray, because it appeared
that whatever he had written to the Court of late had been divulged, probably
by Elizabeth herself to some person who had been careful to communicate it to
Mary. " My friends yonder," he says, " complain divers times, that such
intelligence as I write from hence out of Scotland (as they think to the Queen's
Majesty my Sovereign), are returned back unto their Queen, some time by word,
some time by writing ; they know that this cometh not from your Honour, nor
from any of those to whom I write commonly of these matters (which only are
my Lord of Leicester, my Lord of Bedford, and your Honour), but even from
the Queen's Majesty's own mouth, who, at the last time that Mr. Melvyn was
there, left very little untold unto him of all that at any time I had written." It
will be seen that there was some treachery also here, for, though Melvil was
an ambassador of Mary's, yet Murray and Argyle thought him too much their
his brother is to this effect : That Ruxby's communications had placed him in so awkward a situa-
tion, as a tamperer with Mary 's friends and Elizabeth's enemies that he wished the Queen to be per-
suaded to tell Killegrew that she minded shortly to call him home, for fear lest Elizabeth, dis-
covering his trick, should command him to return. Cecil's spy, therefore, was probably of some
use as a check upon Melvil, Mary's avowed spy and practiser.
390 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
friend to have communicated what he heard to their disparagement;* but,
besides this, these very Lords informed Randolph that Melvil had written to
Mary that he had spoken with Lassells, and that he had assured him, for Mary's
information, that the Papists were ready to rise in England whenever she would
have them : and that she had been assured of the same by others.
Bad and base therefore, as Ruxby's story may appear, when considered by
itself, it is little to be doubted from the accounts above, that there was as much
practising against Elizabeth in England, with Mary's knowledge and conni-
vance, as there could be practising in Scotland against Mary, or rather in favour
of the Protestants, and to the defence of England by Elizabeth or her Minister ;
and that the most secret communications of Elizabeth, were as much in the way
of being divulged and made known to Mary, as Mary's to Elizabeth.
Rapin's account of the state of things in both countries, may now therefore be
added, as it is a very just account, and may help to explain what is generally
too little considered, that without spies of some description or other, no country
in Europe, but especially England, could have been safe for a day. The Pope
in his soldiers (as the Jesuits have been fitly enough called, and as we shall have
frequent occasion to shew), had a large army of such insidious agents, spread
over Europe. But to return to Rapin's account of the result of Ruxby's doings
in Scotland.
" Meanwhile Sir Robert Melvil, the Scotch ambassador in England, having
found that Ruxby was Cecil's spy, gave notice of it to the Court of Scotland,
who ordered him to be arrested with all his papers, among which were found
some of Cecil's letters in cipher ; he was kept with such care, that it could not
be known why he was apprehended. Shortly after, Elizabeth sending Kille-
grew into Scotland about some affairs, ordered him to demand Ruxby, as an
English fugitive. Mary,fcig)iing to be ignorant of Ruxby's business in Scot-
land, replied, she was ready to deliver him to any person, whom the Queen her
sister should commission to receive him. But Elizabeth, understanding he had
been arrested, and suspecting the reason, said no more of the matter. Thus
these two Queens, amidst their mutual demonstrations of sisterly friendship,
* " The Scots Ambassador for the time in England," (says Sir James Melvil his brother,) " had
so good hap, that his credit was great, for he was esteemed sure and secret ; which caused a great
number of the Nobility, Protestants and Papists, to communicate their inward minds and secretest
intentions unto him, i. e. against Elizabeth, and in favour of Mary's right to the crown."— See his
own instructions to his brother, just cited.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 391
looked upon one another after all, as real enemies, and not without cause.
Mary was privately labouring, by her emissaries, to corrupt Elizabeth's sub-
jects, and inspire them with a spirit of rebellion. Elizabeth, on her part,
countenanced the malecontents of Scotland, with secret intimations, that
they should always find in her powerful protection."
While Melvil was at London (i. e. upon the commission to inform Elizabeth
of Mary's delivery), Mary's principal friends thought it absolutely necessary to
remove the Court of England's suspicion, occasioned by Ruxby's intelligence ;
and that, for this purpose, it would be proper for Queen Mary to write two
letters ; one to her Ambassador in ordinary, to be shewn to Elizabeth, another
to Secretary Cecil; and draughts were sent to her. These letters were writ
accordingly ; in that to her Ambassador, Mary protested that she expected
nothing but by the favour and friendship of her good sister. She enjoined her
Ambassador not to hearken to any proposal of the male.c.cmtents (i. e. of England),
but threaten to discover their plots if they came to his knowledge. The other
letter, directed to the Secretary of State, contained the same protestation. By
those letters, says Melvil, Ruxby's intelligence was suppressed, and my brother
suffered to stay in England, whereby the Queen's friends so increased, that many
whole shires were ready to rebel, and their captains already named by the election
of the Nobility.
It is impossible we should think to read this account, without perceiving, that
in the course of these dark and covert proceedings, Mary's Ministers evinced
quite as much subtlety,* and displayed as strong a spirit of deception and
intrigue, as could in any manner be attributed to Cecil, or Randolph, or Ruxby ;
and seem to have almost gloried in the success of their insidious operations ;
but Rapin proceeds, with reference to the last citation from the Memoirs.
" This confession," he says, " of a man who probably was well informed, since
he was brother of the Ambassador in ordinary, shews what were Mary's designs.
Can it be thought, that the Ambassador undertook to incite the Nobles and
counties to rebel, contrary to the will of the Queen his mistress, or without her
knowledge? There are in Melvil's Memoirs several passages to the like effect,
which shew that Mary and her friends were perpetually striving to take arms
* " Robert Melvil," says Mad"c. de Keralio, " avoit manage les iuterets de sa Souveraine avec
tant d' art, de zele et de 1' intelligence, qu' Elisabeth venoit d' eprouver combien ses sujets catho-
liques et Protestans etoient determines en faveur de sa rivale."
392 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
against Elizabeth, when it should be deemed proper. It was therefore no won-
der, if Mary refused to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. That ratification would
have discouraged her friends in England and other countries. Elizabeth was
not ignorant of Mary's aim, which in short was to dethrone her if she could
possibly find means. This was the reason of her pressing her so earnestly to
take the false step of ratifying the Treaty of Edinburgh, in order to break her
measures. On the other hand, at the very time, Mary was making protestations
of friendship to her good sister, and entreating her to stand godmother to her
son, she was endeavouring to insnare her, by persuading her to get her declared
heir to the crown. She knew could she once obtain that advantage, her party,
which was already very great in England, would become more numerous and
powerful. But they both knew their interests too well, to fall into the snares
they laid for each other. So Mary never ratified the Treaty of Edinburgh,
neither did Elizabeth ever declare her her next heir."
This is an excellent account of things, and, having been written before the
controversy began, which in the course of the last half century has occupied
so many pens, we are the more disposed to trust to it,* especially as the author
goes on to say, what we are as much disposed to regard as the very truth
itself; " It may, however, be justly presumed, that if Mary had not lost herself
another way, she would have thrown Elizabeth into difficulties, which with all
her policy, she would hardly have got clear of."
We are so much persuaded, that Mary had great advantages over Elizabeth,!
till she fell by her own great imprudence, that we have copied the above
passage the more particularly, as it seems to afford a clue to many of the dismal
scenes that ensued, and of which we shall have to give an account.
* By the writers to whom we refer, Rapin is, of course, branded as an enemy to Mary. We
doubt not but that we shall incur the same stigma amongst the majority of our readers, for
who can take the part of Elizabeth or Cecil, in this deep tragedy, without giving offence to all
unreflecting sentimentalists ? But reflection, and the most attentive consideration, are forced upon
us, by the subject of our inquiries.
^ tMad11". de Kerilio, speaking of Elizabeth, 1564, says, " Rivale de Marie, elle ne pouvoit
etre que rivale heureuse. La puissance et le genie 1'emportoient sur les charmes et les talens :
Marie etoit abandonnee ; Elizabeth recevoit des Ambassades," &c.— Now, why was Mary aban-
doned ? only, because Elizabeth's foreign enemies were jealous of each other, else she might have
obtained a balance on her side, of power, as well as of charms and talents. But Austria would
not let France have her, nor France let Austria have her, nor Spain let either of them have her,
though they all sought her with views inimical to Elizabeth and England.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 393
We have constantly said, that the story of Mary Queen of Scots, properly
begins in the reign of Henry VIII., when Cecil himself was very young, Eliza-
beth a child, and Mary an infant. Young, however, as the former was, he was
precisely in the way to mark the beginning of things, and personally concerned
in what passed as soon as ever Henry was dead. From that moment, Mary was
made a blind for all sorts of sinister practices against England, Scotland, and
Protestantism in both kingdoms, by France, the Pope, and every bigoted
Catholic in Europe. This was not her fault but her misfortune ; the latter she
could not help, but the former, as far as we can judge, not only might, but
should have been avoided. And at how very remarkable a period did she go
astray ? the instant almost that she had given birth to a Prince, in whom the
hopes of the whole island of Britain might be judged to centre, and in whom,
therefore, both kingdoms could not fail to take an immediate interest. The
Prince was born in June, in August the Earl of Bedford informed Cecil that
Bothwell was taken into such favour, as to have become as insolent and pre-
suming as Rizzio, though generally hated.
We must again trespass on the author just cited, as his account is as correct,
and apparently as impartial as any that could be given ; more especially as he
gives us his opinion of the comparative credit of three writers of great name, but
doubtful reputation, as contemporary historians; Buchanan, Melvil, and Camden.
" The Prince's baptism being to be celebrated at Stirling, the Ambassadors
of France, England, and Savoy, who were to stand godfathers, repaired thither,
and the Court was very numerous. It was the Earl of Bedford whom Elizabeth
sent to stand in her place. The Prince was named JAMES, and the Queen
prevailed, though with much difficulty, that he should be baptized after the
manner of the Romish Church, intending to educate him in the Catholic religion.
While the Court was at Stirling, the King was exposed to unheard-of indigni-
ties, not daring to shew himself, by reason of the extreme want he was reduced
to ; while Bothwell appeared with a royal magnificence, to the great scandal of
the Queen. But not insisting upon what Buchanan says, since he is not
thought impartial, I shall content myself with the testimony of Melvil ; the
Queen, says that author, being at Stirling, seemed very melancholy, and com-
plained to me of Rizzio's murder, as an outrage that could not be blotted out
of her mind. I endeavoured to comfort her, and to persuade her to recall the
banished Lords, that she might enjoy a peaceable Government. I had now
somewhat prevailed with her, but alas ! she had bad company about her ; for
VOL. II. 3 E
394 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGH LEY. [1566.
the Earl of Bothwell, who had a mark of his own that he shot at, as soon as he
understood of her wise and merciful deliberations, took occasion to bring in the
Earl of Morton and his associates, thereby to make them friends, and by them
to fortify his faction ; for, apparently, he had already in his head, the resolution
of performing the foul murder of the King, which he afterwards put in execution,
that he might marry the Queen ;" he adds further, that the Earl of Bedford, *
being upon the point of returning to England,f desired him to tell the Queen
from him, that for her own honour she should entertain the King as she had
done at the beginning ; Melvil discharged his commission, but without any
effect/}; What Buchanan relates, the author concludes is much better confirmed
by these testimonies, than confuted by Camderis silence.
We shall endeavour to step cautiously, and therefore securely, through this
distressing part of our narrative ; being very sensible of the stumbling-blocks in
our road, and the difficulty of going right amidst a host of guides, some true,
perhaps, but many exceedingly false. We write, we most willingly acknow-
ledge, under a constant impression that Mary never ceased to be a most dan-
gerous rival to Queen Elizabeth, not merely in herself, or from any innate
* Francis Russel, second Earl of Bedford. Caraden speaks of him, as " a true follower of
religion and virtue;" he died in the year 1585. Sir Robert Melvil had instructed his brother,
Sir James, to procure Mary to ask to have Leicester and Cecil sent by Elizabeth; it does not
appear that any such step was taken ; or if it had been, what were Sir Robert Melvil's precise
views. We shall see, hereafter, that they were invited to be at Paris, just previous to the massacre
of St. Bartholomew.
t We have not judged it necessary, to notice very particularly the commission with which the
Earl of Bedford was further charged, to urge afresh the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh,
because both Queens appear to have been long before brought to the point, from which neither
would by anymeans be induced to recede or depart ; by the declaring of Mary heir to the Eng-
lish throne, as she desired, Elizabeth must have known that all the Catholic friends of the former
would derive encouragement and hope, inimical to her own repose and the peace of the kingdom.
She went, therefore, as far as she could well go, by the stipulation, that she would do nothing to
invalidate Mary's claims after her own demise. And Mary, perhaps, went as far as she could
go with prudence, in stipulating to forego the claim, title, &c., during Elizabeth's life. But the
matter, as we shall see, was about to be taken up by Parliament, in an unexpected manner.
I Camden says, Bedford was expressly commanded not to give Darnley the title of King, and
yet proceeds to add. that according to his instructions, he dealt with the Queen to have the jarrings
between her and her husband compounded ; but the latter proceeding must have appeared to be a
virtual acknowledgment of the title, which, as her husband, Darnley bore, and after all, the injunc-
tion hot to give him the title of King does not appear in Bedford's instructions. — Laing, i. 22.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 395
original malignity of heart, but from what she could not avoid ; her near rela-
tionship to the father of Elizabeth, and therefore to the crown ; her early
introduction into the French Court ; her powerful, ambitious, and bigoted
foreign connexions ; the prejudices of a foreign education, and her rooted
attachment to the Romish faith. These things threw her, from the very begin-
ning of her wearisome life, into the hands of the worst foes England could
have, during the struggles of the sixteenth century ; and when England, after
two reigns of successful contest with the see of Rome, had appeared to be
recovered by it under her last Sovereign, and to have been brought back to its
pristine obedience to the Pope, its relapse on Elizabeth's accession, could not
fail to awaken afresh all the angry passions of the Romanists in general ; to
set in motion all the engines of resentment and intolerance the Pope had at his
command, and to point out Elizabeth as the grand object of their attacks, from
the first day of her reign to the last. Unhappily for Mary she stood in the situa-
tion, according to the sentiments of the Catholics, of a legitimate opponent ; as an
individual that might constantly be set up against Elizabeth, as the only proper
competitor, in short, for the crown she wore ; and as one ready to take it up, if
it could but be made to fall from the head on which the Parliament and people
of England had proudly placed it. Mary could not help these things, nor yet
could Elizabeth ; they were a trouble to each other, from the circumstances in
which they were placed by the inevitable accidents (if we may use such a word)
of their birth and parentage ; both therefore deserve, in some degree, to be
pitied, for having been brought upon the public stage of human life, in such direct
opposition to each other, that till one of the two should actually fall, the contest
could not be terminated ; each being supported by a party, resolved not to
retire from the field, or yield the victory, as long as their respective combatants
could be kept alive. This we conceive, is the proper view that should be taken
of the contest between the rival Queens, and that those who would fritter it
down to a paltry competition of merely personal jealousies, are transcendantly
mistaken ; the advocates of Mary betraying their ignorance of the real historical
bearings of the case, when they rail so unmercifully at Elizabeth ; the advo-
cates of Elizabeth being equally wrong, when they attribute Mary's fall, more
to the imputations on her character, than to her political intrigues. Facts are
the only things we should look to, as far as they can possibly be ascertained,
amidst abundance of contradictions.
At the time of the royal baptism, then, it seems undoubted, that Mary and
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.. [1566.
her weak husband, were upon terms as far as possible from friendly ;* so much
so as to engage the attention of both the English and French ambassadors.
The Earl of Bedford urged Melvil to interpose, to reconcile them ; and
, Castelnau, the French Minister, is known to have interposed himself, to put
* We have not entered into the particulars of what passed at Jedbtirgh, in the month of
October : Bothwell's wound ; the Queen's extraordinary visit to him at the Hermitage ; and her
dangerous illness afterwards ; when the King visited her, but was so ill received as speedily to
take his departure again. Mr. Turner has so lately, in his history of the reign of Elizabeth,
given such a lively and circumstantial account of all that passed on that memorable occasion,
that we cannot do better than refer the reader at once to .his statement of particulars ; vol. ii.
ch. xxii. There also the reader may find a very curious and elaborate account of the proceed-
ings at Craigmillar previous to the baptism ; proceedings which affect the character of Mary
more perhaps than any other incidents preceding the death of Darnley ; and of which we shall
have occasion to speak hereafter; Mr. Turner's conclusions on several points seem to us irre-
sistible. Had we seen his work before we had proceeded thus far in our present undertaking, we
should have felt more confidence in our own conclusions, which had been formed and actually
committed to paper, as we could easily prove, before the publication of that portion of Mr. T.'s
Modern History of England.
We were surprised to find it stated in Madlle. tie Keralio's History of Elizabeth, that the Queen
had been informed that Bothwell was actually dead when she took the journey to the Hermitage,
and that she went in consequence of this, personally to take charge of the borders. — But upon
many other points relating to this memorable journey to Jedburgh, the author referred to
appears to us to have been under a great delusion, and to have exposed herself to the most
palpable contradictions. Mr. Turner is much more correct, and better supported by his
references to contemporary documents. — One point we cannot help noticing; in order to prove
that Darnley was regardless of the Queen's severe illness at Jedburgh, the Bishop of Ross's
letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow is cited ; in which it is said, " Pendant tout ce temps, le roi
est reste a Glasgow, et n' est parvenu visiter la reine." This letter was sent away on the 27th of
October, and on the 28th the King armed ; the French Ambassador not knowing, as he wrote to
France at the very time, whether he had ever been sent to, or even informed of the Queen's illness,
a case sadly misrepresented by Tytler. [See vol. ii. 64.] But at all events, the very letter of the
Bishop so often cited, proves as clearly as any thing could be proved, that the Queen was for
leaving the care of her child to any body sooner than its own father; which should help to
confirm what Knox and Buchanan have said of his ill reception at Jedburgh, when he did arrive ;
for that he did come at last is most true : and indeed she had so expressed herself to Maitland,
during her illness, as to lead him to tell her Ambassador at Paris, that " it is ane heart-break for
her to think that he should be her husband, and how to be free of him she sees no out-gait."
The Bishop's letter is printed by Mad"c. de Keralio from the original in the Scots' College at Paris,
and Maitland's may be seen in Laing. Chalmers says, the King never came to Jedburgh ; but
the French Ambassador, Le Cro", saw him there, and had a great deal of conversation with him,
though he stayed but one night.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 397
things upon a different footing, if possible ; and with some temporary effect it is
said, but of such very short duration, as scarcely to deserve mentioning. Mary
was, probably, a woman of too great discernment and too much sense, not to be
sorely disappointed, on discovery of the intellectual weakness of her too young
husband ; and it must be admitted, that the unfeeling manner in which he had
allowed the murder of Rizzio to be perpetrated, could not be easily obliterated
from her mind. Still, she had apparently forgiven him; and had she been
disposed to ratify or confirm the friendship which had been thus restored, the
birth and baptism of their child, would surely have presented occasions for a
reconciliation, without the uncalled-for, and almost provoked interposition of
foreigners and strangers. Had Darnley been by any necessity absent, the case
might have been different, but he was upon the spot, to suffer the mortification
of being excluded, or at the utmost not so welcomed, as the father of a first-
born royal infant might expect, under almost any circumstances.*
And yet there is another fact, which we think stands, after every effort made
to soften it down, uncontradicted. We mean, of course, the particular favour
shewn to Bothwell at this very time,t the ascendancy he seemed to be gaining
over her mind and affections, though married to another woman, and the con-
fidence with which he seemed to be treated, upon all occasions public or
private, though his general character appeared to give him few or no claims to
so distinguishing a preference, nay, quite the contrary ; still we may allow him
the credit of such superior abilities, when compared with Darnley, as very
naturally to aggravate the mortification of Mary, when she reflected on the bad
choice she had made, and we may conclude that his manners were so insi-
nuating, as to be calculated to make an impression on a mind like Mary's.J She
* We are far from wishing to extenuate any of Darnley 's real and gross faults ; but as Buchanan
has been blamed for some stories he has related of Mary's power over Darnley, as though she
could at all control him, or ever attempted to do so ; this instance of his exclusion from the
baptismal ceremony, seems certainly to prove the contrary.
f Bothwell was absolutely appointed to receive the Ambassadors sent to the christening,
though the King was there, at which the Nobility are said to have been offended. — See Sir John
Forster's Letter to Cecil, Dec. 11, in Robertson's Appendix.
I Talents and manners would appear to be the only recommendatory qualities he could
possess to captivate the Queen, if the accounts given of him by Brantome and the Earl of
Bedford be correct. The former having pronounced him to be the ugliest man he ever saw, and
the latter the naughtiest, not exempt from the most detestable vices ; but if we would see his
character at length, it may be found in the following extract from the work of Mad"e. Keraliu :
398 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
was at this time, as Robertson allows, " young, gay, and affable, possessed of
a great sensibility of temper, and capable of the utmost tenderness of affec-
tions." How many unhappy females of this very character and description,
have become the prey of artful and designing men. Had she not been a Queen,
the false steps she was induced to take at this period, would, perhaps, have been
long before this buried in oblivion, or remembered only, as one of the many
sad instances that have occurred in all ages of unprincipled seduction and
female ruin.* But Mary should surely have felt that she stood too high, and
was too conspicuously placed in the world, we will not say to fall with any
dignity (for her fall is still disputed), but even to stoop so low, as to afford
ground for the imputations to which she subjected herself, and which, at all
events, can never now be cleared away.
But we must hasten to bring this sad story down to the conclusion of the
year 156G. It could not be expected that any temper should have very
patiently borne the mortifications to which Darnley was subjected by Mary's
resentment, or what must have been worse to most minds, her marked indiffer-
" Une politesse excessive dans les manieres le rendoit capable de plaire, et il joignit a ses vices
la plus adroite perfidie ; insensible a la gloire, incapable de patriotisme et d'affaires serieuses,
corrompu et plein d' audace, prodigue sans moeurs, effrene dans sa vie publique et privee, une
longue habitude avoit fortifie ses inclinations depravues : il ne connoissoit plus ni honneur, ni
probite, ni religion, superbe dans la prosperite, bas dans 1'infortune, mais incapable de prevoii-
les consequences de ses actions et dc songer a 1'avenir, il preparoit froidement, le fer, le poison,
les embuches, pour commettre un crime, inais il ne pouvoit s' en assurer le fruit." She is very
severe at the same time upon Murray, and we do not fuel ourselves obliged to vindicate his per-
sonal character, while we defend the cause in which he happened to be engaged, though we
fully agree with those who think he has not had fair play given him, and that he may be num-
bered among the many victims of party spite and malice.
* Mad"e. de Keralio, we are sorry to say, notwithstanding the horrid character she had given
of Bothwell, seems to regard his attentions to Mary, in too favourable a point of view. " II
redoubloit ses soins aupres d'elle; il n* oubloit rien de ce qui pouvoit lui plaire et charmer sa
douleur; il stmbloit ne voir et ne connoitre qu'elle dans le monde ; le moindre desir de
Marie etoit pour lui une loi supreme, il cherchoit a la consoler, il aigrissoit son couroux contre
un mari qui disoit-il auroit du trouver en elle toute sa felicite ; il tentoittous les moyens d'eteindre
ses regrets en lui inspirant une nouvelle passion." This is certainly too highly coloured for the
credit of Mary, such attentions from a married man should have alarmed her pride ; but Mad"e.
de Keralio still draws a conclusion favourable to Mary, which, however, seems to be contra-
dicted by undeniable facts. We allude to the proceedings at Craigmillar, of which Mr. Turner
has, in our opinion, given but too correct an account.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
ence at such a very particular moment ; his conduct on the occasion has been
stigmatized as wayward and capricious. We confess we wonder so weak a
man should have acted so wisely, for feeling himself degraded in the sight of
the whole Court, he determined to go abroad, nor return till the Queen should
be disposed to look upon him more favourably, nor could any remonstrances of
the Queen or Council, at the moment, divert him from these purposes ; so that
his father, being to all appearance under as great a cloud as himself, or at the
least as much dissatisfied with the proceedings at Court, he resolved to join
him at Glasgow, preparatory to his putting his design in execution. He had,
indeed, made some efforts to prepare for a friendly reception amongst the
strangers he was about to visit, by transmitting a statement of his case to the Pope,
and to the Kings of France and Spain ;* but his complaints to the Queen are
of the most importance, as exhibiting his own motives for leaving the country.
In a letter addressed to her, he assigned the two following reasons for the
course he was about to take : " She herself," he said, " no longer admitted
him into any confidence^ and had deprived him of all power; and the Nobles,
after her example, treated him with open neglect, so that he appeared in every
place without the dignity and splendour of a King."f
These reasons, as far as they went, were plausible enough. He could not be
expected with any comfort to remain where he was ; it was giving Mary a chance
of placing things upon a different footing, if she had chosen it : his father, Lord
Lennox, though displeased at what had taken place, was no encourager of his
foreign expedition. The English and French Ministers, sponsors by representa-
tion to the new-born infant, had endeavoured to restore peace ; the Council had
interfered, but without effect upon Darnley. If we look to the complaints of the
latter, and consider his age, surely they were not remediless : the Queen might
have re-admitted him to her confidence, and restored to him some degree of
power, at the least ; but we do not find that any such overtures were made on
her part. She was careful to send abroad counter-statements to Darnley 's
representations, to the several Courts of France, and Spain, and Rome ; but she
does not appear to have entered, with any sort of cordiality, into any measures of
* These letters were probably the occasion of Mary's causing letters also to be written to
the King and Queen Mother of France, and to the Cardinal of Lorrain, " containing a Dis-
course of the Proceedings betwixt the King and her." — See Secretary Lethington's letter to
the Archbishop of Glasgow, from Jedburgh, Oct. 24, 1566, in Laing's Appendix, 72.
t Robertson.
400 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
reconciliation, until her visit to Glasgow, and her plan of removal, which termi-
nated in his death. Maitland and others had proposed to her the measure of
divorce ;* but this would not exactly do, as Robertson wisely enough suggests;
this might have affected her son and the English succession, and yet some
divorce probably was necessary, to further all the purposes of Bothwell. We
do not feel ourselves obliged, in any manner, to decide upon the charges against
Mary; but knowing the imputations cast upon her conduct, we have no sort of
hesitation to say, that if she were innocent, she ought to have been more guarded
against appearances. She was notoriously upon bad terms with Darnley,
whilst she encouraged Bothwell, to the surprise and offence of many about
her Court. Darnley took his leave of her (not for ever, but for a long time),
and departed from her presence to Glasgow, having a ship in waiting to
convey him beyond sea.
We shall not stop to discuss the question whether he were poisoned before his
departure for Glasgow ; it has been asserted, as every body knows, but it may
be well left out of the history we have to relate, as a matter quite inconclusive,
and not much affecting the issue of things. It i§ most certain that he had a
severe illness after his arrival at Glasgow, and which indeed first seized him on
his journey thither, so as to excite great suspicions of poison ; but we have no
occasion to insist upon this one way or the other, and having brought him to
Glasgow, there we shall leave him, as far at least as regards the year 1566, with
all other transactions relating to Scotland, and proceed to other things.
During the year 15G6, the Low Countries were thrown into a state of great
alarm and agitation, by the arbitrary and unconstitutional proceedings of Philip
and his representatives. The Reformation was making great progress among
the people, and Philip was earnestly bent upon putting it down, by the most
obnoxious instruments he could possibly introduce into a country constitutionally
protected by laws and institutions, which Philip waa as much as any person
bound to respect, and which could not be violated without alarming the
prejudices, and awakening the resentment of a people proud of their privileges,
industrious, enterprising and opulent, and who were not destitute of valiant
leaders and defenders, if driven to extremities. Charles V. by conciliatory
' We must again refer to Mr. Turner's able examination of the proceedings at Craigmillar,
The reader must be left to judge for himself how far the actual death of the King was at this time
contemplated ; and if so, who particularly, of the several persons (the Queen included) engaged
in the conference, were accessory to the design.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 401
manners, and a real respect for his Flemish subjects (though he had several
times given alarm to the popular assemblies), had in many instances wisely
promoted their best interests; but Philip disdained the freedom and simplicity
of the Flemish manners ; his pride would not allow him to cultivate the esteem
of his Low Country subjects by any personal condescensions ; and the more
servile obedience of the Spaniards gave them a preference in his eyes, calculated
at all times to excite the jealousy of the former. In the year 1559, his con-
nexion with England being suddenly broken by the demise of Mary, Philip
had quitted the Provinces to reside in Spain, with such projects in his head for
the future government, or rather subjugation, of his Flemish subjects while
personally absent, as could not fail to occasion the greatest heart-burnings and
discontent. He had left the government in the hands of his natural sister, the
Duchess of Parma, who was to be guided by the counsels of the Cardinal de
Granvelle, a Minister specially recommended to his son by Charles V. at the
period of his abdication — a man of singular talents natural and acquired, highly
qualified for public business of all description, but of a temper and disposition
the most despotic and tyrannical that could be conceived, in all matters
affecting his religion; so that in him the Protestants of all countries were sure
to find a bitter enemy.* The extirpation or subjection of the Reformists, under
the name of Heretics, was now known to be a settled principle with the
Catholics ; and Philip seemed to be prepared to rely upon that odious tribunal,
a Court, of Inquisition, as an almost infallible instrument to accomplish his
* The following account of this unpopular Churchman and Minister is taken from Le Clerc's
Histoire des Pays-Bas, torn. i. p. 5: " II etoit fils cle Nicolas Perrenot ; d'abord Marechal a
Nozeroy en Bourgoyne, et ensuite procureur h Dol. La Duchesse de Parme 1' ayant pris a son
service en qualite de Secretaire, Charles-quint lui trouva de 1' esprit et de la capacite; il se
1'attacha, et, selon toute apparence, Perrenot ne negligea pas le soin de sa fortune, puisq'il acheta
la terre et seigneurie de Granvelle, et obtint pour son fils 1' evfeche d'Arras. Philippe II. a la
recommendation de Charles-quint, employa Antoine Perrenot, eveque d'Arras, dans quelques
affaires secretes ; et ce prelat, souple, flatteur aupres de son maitre, mais violent et ambitieux,
travailla sans rel&che an progres du despotisme, afin de se conserver la faveur du Roi. Son
credit lui fit oublierla bassesse de sa naissance; il offensa la noblesse, vexa les citoyens, et devint
1' horreur du peuple." He was nominated to the see of Arras at the early age of twenty-five ;
became afterwards Archbishop of Malines, Primate of the Low Countries, and Cardinal, through
the influence of the Duchess of Parma. He was a prodigious linguist, and is said to have been
able to dictate to five Secretaries at a time letters in as many languages. He knew seven in all.
The Dktionaire Historiqve gives him credit for many virtues, not however without this essential
draw-back, " mais cruel par zcle."
VOL. II. 3 F
402 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1:566.
purposes. He knew the force and power it had obtained in Spain,* and he
looked to the establishment of it in all the countries dependent upon him,
but especially in the Milanese, in Naples, and in the Netherlands ; he was
disappointed however in all his purposes. The Milanese and the Neapolitans
successfully resisted the attempt, but more quietly than proved to be the case
with the Flemings. The latter were stimulated by the love of liberty, and a
sacred regard for the institutions of their country, to defy the authority whereby
they were about to be oppressed. Having in vain demanded of the Court a
meeting of the States, to deliberate on the unsettled state of the country, and
the dangers that appeared to threaten them, the Prince of Orange, the Count
of Egmont, Count Horn, and several other Lords, withdrew from the Council
of State, and agreed to address the King to remove the Cardinal de Granvelle,
as a person highly obnoxious to the people ; and so odious, that the worst
was to be feared if he continued any longer in the Netherlands. Granvelle,
upon a hint received from the King, and to avoid the disgrace of a regular
dismission or recall, voluntarily withdrew; and as soon as he was gone, the
great men resumed their places in the Council.
A general suspicion seemed to prevail, that the King was bent upon
establishing an arbitrary authority among them, in defiance of all their charters
of liberty ; that he was prepared to crush them by the rigorous, terrific, and
dark proceedings of a Spanish Inquisition ; that he was about to abolish the
meetings of the States General, to enforce the decrees of the Council of Trent,
to extirpate the Protestants who had now become very numerous, and to lessen
the interest of the great men who might be expected to oppose or resist his
designs ; and in this state things seem to have stood at the close of the
year 1566.
•V
* Philip's grand principle was to govern the Holy See by paying the most profound respect to
it, and to exterminate the Protestants in all parts. At that time there were very few in Spain.
Philip solemnly vowed to destroy them all, and he fulfilled his vow. The Inquisition supported
him extremely well. All those who were suspected at Valladolid, were burnt by a slow fire ;
while Philip from his palace window beheld their tortures and heard their cries. The Archbishop
of Toledo and Father Constantino Pontius, preacher and confessor to his father, Charles V., w«re
imprisoned in the Holy Office, and the latter burnt in effigy after his decease. — Voltaire.
Philip (the same author continues), hearing that there were some Heretics in Piedmont,
bordering on the Milanese, sent his orders to the Governor in these three words, HANG THEM ALL.
And in Calabria, having directed hulf of such as were convicted to be hanged, and the other half
to be burnt, his orders were punctually executed.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 403
As the Queen in the year 1564 had honoured the University of Cambridge
with a visit, in the summer of this year, 1566, she conferred the same distinction
on the sister University of Oxford, where the Earl of Leicester was Chancellor.
As the account of this visit, in Nichols's entertaining work of Queen Eliza-
beth's Progresses, commences with a reference to Lord Burghley's Notes (or
Diary, as it is often called), we cannot do better than copy the entries selected
by the editor, though not all relating to the visits to the University, but as apper-
taining to the summer of 1566.
" 1566. — June. Fulsharst, a fool, was suborned to preach slanderously of me,
at Greenwych, to the Queen's Majesty ; for which he was committed to
Bridewell.
" 16. a Discord inter Com :* Sussex and Leicester, at Greenwych, there
appeased by her Majesty.
" 21. Accord between the Erie Sussex and Leicester, afore her Majesty
at Greenwich.
" August 3. The Queen's Majesty was at Colly weston, in Northamptonshire."
This seat and manor of Colly weston had descended to the crown in 1521,
on the attainder of Edward, Earl of Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham ; and
in 1523, David Cecil, grandfather of Lord Burghley (then only two years old),
was by Henry VIII. appointed steward of the Manor.")" The house had been
almost rebuilt by the Lady Margaret, the King's mother. Prints of the place
are to be seen in Peck's Disiderata Curiosa, Watts's Views, and in the Virtuosi's
Museum.
" August 5. The Queen's Majesty was at my House at Stamford, at the Grey
Friars."J
Her Majesty upon this occasion, would probably have gone to Burghley (or
Burley as it is written), but the younger daughter of the Secretary, Anne, after-
wards Countess of Oxford, happened to be suddenly taken ill there of the
small-pox.
" Aug. 31. The Queen in progress, went from Woodstock to Oxford."
This visit, it seems, was to have taken place earlier, but for some apprehensions
entertained of the plague being in the town.
• i. e. between the Earls of Sussex and Leicester ; a difference and rivalry rendered very me-
morable by the writings, not merely of historians, but of novelists. t See vol. i.
I In 1565, the Queen had passed through Stamford, in her progress to Lincolnshire, and dined
at the White-Friars, which fell to the ground just after she had quitted it.
404 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
Two days before her Majesty's entrance into Oxford, Sir William went thither
to see every thing made ready for her reception, in company with the Lord Lei-
cester (Chancellor), the Marquess of Northampton, Lord Strange, Lord Shef-
field, Lord Paget, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, and others. The Vice Chan-
cellor and Heads of Colleges went out to meet them, and escort them to Christ
Church, where the other Members of the University were appointed to receive
them in the open quadrangle, but a heavy rain taking place prevented this part of
the ceremony. Two of the Members of the College, however, delivered speeches
on their arrival ; the one addressed to Lord Leicester, as Chancellor, the other to
Sir William ; both which being ended, the Secretary, as the account states, after
he had talked with Mr. John Pottes,* of the cause why Aristotle in his Poetics
wrote de Monarchic/, there being, as he said, at that time, no monarch in the world;
entered into further talk concerning the privileges of the University of Oxford ;
and then forthwith they went to dinner. After dinner, three Bachelors of Christ
Church, were called in, to dispute upon the following question, " then presently,"
as it is said, " proposed by Mr. Secretary."
" An divitise plus conferant ad doctrinam persequendam quam Paupertas?"
This disputation ended, the company appear to have returned to the Queen
at Woodstock.
It was on the evening of the 31st of August, that her Majesty entered Oxford,
being met at Wolvercot, as the utmost limits of the University, by the Earl of
Leicester, and other distinguished persons, in their full academical habits, |
where receiving the staves of the Beadles, at the hands of the Chancellor, she
returned them again, as at Cambridge, and having heard a speech spoken by the
Provost of Oriel, late orator, she proceeded on her way, and being arrived within
half a mile of the city, was met by the Mayor and Corporation, the former
delivering up his mace, according to custom, and upon receiving it again, ad-
* Of Merlon College, " insignis Philosophus, et Medicus satis peritus." — Athen. Oxon. He seems
to have been brother to Thomas Pottes of Christ Church, who had spoken the oration addressed
to Lord Leicester.
t Humphrey, President of Magdalen College, being one who attended in his robes, and hav-
ing been very earnest as a Puritan against the habits, when he came to kiss the Queen's hand, she
said to him, smiling, " Mr. Doctor, that loose gown becomes you mighty well, I wonder your
notions should be so narrow." — Life of Leicester. She was complimented by the University for
having conferred the Divinity chair on Dr. Humphrey, a worthy disciple, and therefore a
worthy successor of Peter Martyr. This has been 'adduced as a proof of tl.e regard paid by the
University of Oxford at that time, to the Calvinistic Divines. — Ib. p. 42.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 405
dressing her Majesty in an English speech ; presenting at the same time a cup
of silver, double-gilt, having in it about 40/. of old gold.*
The Queen entered the city in a rich chariot, about five or six o'clock, and
being received with loud acclamations and " Vivats," as at Cambridge, she
acknowledged the latter in Latin, often repeating as she went along, " Gratias
ago ! Gratias ago /" But at Carfax being addressed in Greek, she in Greek also
returned her thanks, with some apologies for not answering the speech itself,
being afraid to attempt it before such a company.
When she had got to Christ Church, and arrived at the hall door, a speech
was made by the public orator, and thence she proceeded to the chapel, where
the Te Deum was sung, after which she was conducted to her lodgings. Many
of the members of Christ Church retired to make room for her company and
attendants, Cecil being one of those who were constantly with the Queen, as the
author of the Latin account of this great ceremony has been careful to record : —
" Commoratique sunt ibidem per hosce dies Comites Leicestria, Oxon. Warwic,
D. Will. Howard, D. Sheffield, Mr. Will. Cecill, Secretarius, Mr. Francis
Knolles, atque alii, quia studentes omnes sese receperunt in alia loca vicina,
praeter prsebendarios quosdam."
After the account we have given of the Queen's reception and entertainment
at Cambridge, it must seem unnecessary to detain the reader with a repetition
of public exercises and exhibitions so similar, and which, indeed, are described
so much at length in other books, as to render it altogether needless for us to
do more than to refer to the publications in which these things appear, but par-
ticularly to a work so well known, and of such extensive detail, as Nichols'
Progresses ; under the year 15G6, almost every thing that could be said upon the
subject, is to be found, as copiously and fully related as we have already shewn
to be the case with regard to the Cambridge visit ; such public solemnities are
not to be passed over in a Life of Lord Burghley, who, even at Oxford, appears
to have received as many marked attentions as when he had to receive and
entertain Elizabeth at Cambridge, as Chancellor ; and not without reason, since
the affairs of both Universities seem almost equally to have been submitted to his
* In the account of this visit in Nichols's Progresses, it is said, " This gift was the first in money,
that ever as I can yet learn, was presented to a prince ;" but in the account preceding of the
Queen's visit to Coventry in 156.5, it is particularly stated, as we have before shewn, that the
Mayor presented to the Queen a purse with 100/. in gold. It is difficult to reconcile these two
accounts; Wood is the authority for the first.
406 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
care and the decision of his judgment, in all emergencies, during his long and
arduous administration. It would utterly surprise any person to read the many
letters, still extant, in EngKsh and Latin, particularly addressed to him by the
most learned and conspicuous members of both Universities.
It should be mentioned, that during this visit to Oxford, on Friday, the 6th of
September, he was created and incorporated a Master of Arts, together with the
following noble and distinguished persons : — •
1. Edward, Earl of Oxford.
2. William Howard, Baron of Effingham.
3. Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond.
4. Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick.
5. Henry Lord Strange, son of Edward Earl of Derby.
6. Edward Stafford, Lord Stafford.
7. John Sheffield, Lord Sheffield.
8. Sir WILLIAM CECIL, Secretary of State.
9. Sir Edward Rogers, Comptroller of the Household.
10. Sir Francis Knollys, Knight.
11. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Knight.
12. John Tamworth, Esq. of the Queen's Privy Chamber.
The Queen concluded her visit to Oxford as she had done at Cambridge, by
a Latin speech, to be seen in Nichols, varying somewhat from that to be found
in Wood's Athense Oxonienses, but which is duly accounted for in the work
referred to.
While these things were passing at Oxford, the sister University was much
disturbed with the old dispute about habits and ceremonies, which the Chan-
cellor, as usual, endeavoured to allay ; recommending in his letters to the Vice-
Chancellor, and other Heads of Colleges, that every means should be used
to bring in peace and uniformity. — See Strypes Annals, vol. i. part ii. 217.
It was not long after the Queen's visit to Oxford that the Parliament assem-
bled, viz. on Monday the 30th of September, 1566, being the 8th year of her
reign. This was no new Parliament, as some have supposed, but the same as
had met in 1563, prolonged and continued by successive prorogations, that is,
by six in all; two in the year 1563, in the 5th year of the Queen's reign, and
the four o-thers, in the 6th, 7th, and 8th years. Had it been a new Parliament,
the Queen would probably have opened it in person, as upon former occasions,
but she only came to the House, after Parliament had assembled, to receive the
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 407
new Speaker of the House of Commons on the 2d of October, the former
Speaker, Williams, being dead. An occurrence requiring to be with all form
notified to her Majesty ; and for which purpose Sir William Cecil appears to
have been one of four persons, " chief members of the House of Commons," as
they are called in D' Ewes, specially deputed. The others, being Sir Edward
Rogers, Comptroller, Sir Francis Knollys, Vice-Chamberlain,* and Sir Ambrose
Cave, Chancellor of the Duchy. This notification having been made to her
Majesty by four Peers, in conjunction with the four Commoners already men-
tioned, and the Lower House having been commanded, and obtained leave to
proceed to the election of a new Speaker, their choice fell upon Richard
Onslow, Esq. Solicitor General to the Queen ; who was accordingly presented
to her Majesty, on the said 2d of October, f and being at the bar of the House
of Lords, delivered a speech, to be seen in D' Ewes' Journal, which speech, ac-
cording to the custom in such proceedings, being entirely in depreciation of his
own qualifications, was as soon answered, and all objections overruled, by the
Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, at the Queen's command.
Her Majesty was put to much trouble by the proceedings of this Parliament,
touching her marriage and the succession to the crown. At the beginning of
the business, conferences between the two Houses being judged requisite, we find
Sir William Cecil constantly nominated as one of the delegates of the Lower
House, and afterwards when it came to be settled that thirty members of each
House should have conference with her Majesty upon these points, he was one of
the thirty sent up by the Commons, his office indeed as Secretary, and his being of
the privy-council, naturally pointing him out as a person not to be passed over.
It appears to have been entirely against the Queen's consent that the Parlia-
ment took this matter up in the way it did, '£ but the steps taken in the sessions
of 1563, being deemed nugatory, from her Majesty's having been brought to no
* It appears to have been in this year that Sir Francis was first appointed Vice-Chamberlain,
Captain of the Queen's Guard, and Lieutenant of the county of Oxford. See Lodge, i. 311.
JllustratioHf.
•j- On this occasion we find Sir William Cecil sitting within the bar, on the woolsack with the
judges.
I The Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Pembroke, and Leicester, are supposed to have been the
promoters of this measure. [Keralio.] Among Lord Burghley's memorandums, the following oc-
curs: " 1566. Oct. 17. Certen Lords, viz. Erie of Pembroke, and Lecester, wer excluded the
presence chamber for furderyng the proposition of the succession to be declared in Parliament,
without the Queen's allowance."
408 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
determination upon the subject, some in both Houses judged, that the original
measure should be pursued, and pressed to some conclusion, especially as far as
regarded the succession. The competitors had now become numerous, and it is
probable that they had all their several advocates and partisans. Some of course
were earnest for the Queen of Scots; some judged her mother-in-law, the Lady
Lennox to have a higher claim, as nearer by one degree to Margaret of Scotland,
eldest daughter of Henry VII. ; others were for the Suffolk line, represented by
the Lady Catherine, supposed to be married to the Earl of Hertford, or by her
younger sister, the Lady Eleanor, Countess of Cumberland. Darnley's claim
of course hung upon that of his mother, but the new-born offspring of himself
and the Queen of Scots, seemed so to unite and concentrate two of the conflict-
in^, or principal claims, as to render the Scotch titles the least questionable of
all. The great point to be decided, however, was in reality, whether at this
time any heir at all should be publicly proclaimed. There is great reason to
think that Elizabeth herself, in regard to the right, preferred the Scotch claim,
but Mary's Catholic connexions seemed decidedly to render such a declaration
dangerous, and the more it was pressed and demanded by Mary, the more sus-
picious it became to Elizabeth. It should also be considered, that in the same
degree that Elizabeth's Catholic subjects might be pleased with the nomination
of Mary, those of her Protestant subjects who had beheld and lamented the se-
verities of the last reign, might be expected to feel alarmed and dispirited at the
nomination of a Popish successor.* The case was undeniably one of great dif-
ficulty to Elizabeth, though some have written upon it, as though Mary's de-
mand were altogether so reasonable, as not to be denied, except from motives of
the most despicable jealousy and selfishness on the part of Elizabeth. In the
mean while, the question constantly threw Elizabeth into fresh difficulties con-
cerning her own marriage, difficulties calculated to expose her all the world over,
having not only to dismiss some high offers, at the hazard of offence, almost every
year, but perhaps forced or provoked to entertain others without any sincere pur-
poses of bringing them to a favourable conclusion ; while her secret and private
sentiments and intentions were enveloped in such deep mystery, as to be beyond
* " Les papiers d'etat de ce temps forment un temoignage incontestable des intrigues d' Elisa-
beth en Ecosse et de celles de Marie en Angleterre. Tous les Anglois Catholiques etoient par-
tisans des droits et de la personne de Marie ; la cour d' Elisabeth s' etoit deelaree en sa faveur, et
la plupart, des grands ; excepte Cecill, paroissoient convaincus de la necessite de nommer cette
princesse heretiere de la couronne." — Keralio. We doubt the truth of this.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 409
the penetration as it would appear, of some of her wisest and most confidential
advisers.
To avert the first attacks of the present Parliament upon the point of suc-
cession, she allowed the Secretary and other Privy Counsellors to assure the
House of Commons that she had been " moved to marry, and that she was minded,
for the wealth of her Commons, to prosecute the same — and that she, therefore,
advised the House to see the sequel of that before they made further suit
touching the declaration of a successor." But, some of the members were for
pressing matters on, considering the present measures but as a continuation or
renewal of what had passed in the former sessions of 1563 ; and which, after a
lapse of many years, left the question just where it was. This brought on the
conferences between the two Houses of which we have spoken above, and the
deputation of thirty Lords and thirty Commoners to attend the Queen at White-
hall, on the 5th of November, where she was addressed by the Lord Keeper in
a long speech, to be seen also in D'Ewes' Journal, with her Majesty's answer ;
obscure enough, certainly, but, on this account, perhaps, the more honest ; for
how could she decide upon points in regard to which, perhaps, her own feelings
and sentiments hung upon contingencies and upon events which it was impos-
sible sufficiently to calculate or foresee. She certainly, however, endeavoured
to turn aside the question concerning the succession, by assurances that she
would marry ; and the Secretary and Sir Edward Rogers were empowered to
proffer such assurances : but it had not the effect of bringing matters to a termina-
tion ; for, upon a motion being made, after the answer returned, to renew the suit to
her Majesty for limitation of the succession, she appears to have been so offended
as to send commands to the two Houses that they should proceed no farther in it.
Such interference, however, being questioned as an invasion of their liberties and
privileges, the business appeared in the end to be hushed up by the Queen's re-
voking her commands, and only requiring the House to suspend matters for a
time; " which revocation was taken of all the House most joyfully," says D'Ewes,
" with most hearty prayer for the Queen, and thanks to her for the same."*
In the course and progress of this discussion, some rude speeches were made
against the Queen,| against Cecil, and against another person, who was sup-
* Strype's Annals, i. part ii. 237.
t See Camden, and Hallam's Constitutional History of England, 135. In Lord Burghley's
own notes the following entry occurs, Oct. 6, 1566. " Certen lewd bills throwne abroade against
the Q. Majesty for not assenting to have the matter of succession precede in Parliament, and
bills also to charge,"
VOL. ir. 3 o
410 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
posed to have dissuaded the Queen from marriage on the ground of some natural
impediment ; Dr. Huick, her physician. But to the Secretary the chief blame
seems to have been imputed by the adverse party ; a party strangely enough
headed by Leicester, who, as Melvil relates, was become the Queen his mistress'
avowed friend, having twice applied to Queen Elizabeth, to declare Mary to be
her heir, alleging it would be her greatest security, and crying out in anger that
CECIL would undo all. We may see by this how very divided the Court was
at this time, and how difficult it must have been for Elizabeth to know exactly
what to do. Leicester's conduct is the more surprising, because, as a pretended
Puritan and despoiler of Church property, he could never seriously desire to
have a Popish successor ; and his friend Sir Francis Knollys, a real and true
Puritan, appears 'to have been quite on the other side. The hazard to the
nation of an undeclared succession, in case of any thing fatal happening to
Elizabeth, was well set forth in the speech of the Lord Keeper, at Whitehall,
on the 5th of November ; but, the hazard Elizabeth might run in declaring her
successor is not less ably disclosed and insisted upon in Camden's account of
the transaction, and to which, as perhaps one of the best accounts to be given
of this unpleasant affair, we would wish to refer.
On the last day of the Parliament the Queen made a speech, in which she
did not hesitate to reprove the sharpness* of the proceedings, with regard to
the succession ; distinguishing between those who had been the prime plotters
and authors of the attack upon her; those who had been actors in it, and with
smooth words carried their point ; those who had given too great credence to
those smooth words, and those who had been silent, whom she approved the
most — of the majority she professed to think well, and to hold them all in as
much kindness as heretofore, even from her heart. As they had offered an
extraordinary subsidy to prevail with her to name a successor, she absolutely
refused to accept it, and at the same time freely remitted a fourth part of a sub-
sidy previously granted; saying, That money in her subjects' coffers, was as good
as in her own. "Thus," says Camden, "a woman's wisdom suppressed these corn-
Considering the high notions of the royal prerogative, entertained, and in a great degree
admitted, till long past the reign of Elizabeth ; we may wonder more at the liberties taken in the
House of Commons, on this and other occasions during the Queen's reign, than at the arbitrary
interference and sharp reproofs of the Sovereign The time was yet to come for putting these
constitutional rights and privileges on a proper and more respectable footing.— See Hume's
3d Appendix, vol. v. 8vo. Edit. 1797.
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 411
motions, which time so qualified, shining clearer and clearer, that very few but
such as were seditious and timorous, were troubled with care about a successor."
As if, however, it had been to keep her promise with Mary, to do nothing
against her title (or suffer nothing to be done against it with her consent),
Thornton, Reader of Law at Lincoln's Inn, was sent to the Tower at this time,
for having in his readings called in question the title of the Queen of Scots.
On Thursday the 2d of January, 1566-7, anno 9. Eliz., the Parliament was
dissolved. In the above Parliament, to give greater security to the Protestant
Church of England, a bill was introduced and passed, to confirm the conse-
cration of Archbishops and Bishops, and to obviate all doubts raised and
encouraged by the Papists, particularly Boner. The occasion of this bill is
fully explained by Strype, and pains taken to shew, that in fact, the conse-
cration of the Protestant Archbishops and Bishops, was good by former
statutes, and that every thing had been done to render the ceremony as valid
and perfect as upon all former occasions. While the Protestant Bishops were
thus amply secured against the calumnies of the Papists, the Popish Bishops
still remaining were as mercifully absolved from all pains and penalties incurred
by their refusal of the oath of supremacy. Even Boner, who was still living,
and who had been certified in the Queen's Court at Westminster, as one that
had incurred the penalties, had the full benefit of this act. Heath, Archbishop
of York, had died in this very year ; he was in principle a firm Catholic, but
of a mild and benevolent disposition ; after having, as Chancellor, proposed
Elizabeth to the Parliament, as successor to Mary, he voluntarily resigned the
Seals, and submitting with the greatest patience to the sentence of deprivation,
retired to his manor of Cobham in Surrey; "where," says Camden, "the
Queen, with whom he was in great grace, visited him many times with mar-
vellous kindness."*
The Secretary was still much troubled by the proceedings at Cambridge,
and obliged to write to the Vice-Chancellor, in strong terms, to put a stop to
the disputing and wrangling about trifling matters, and to endeavour by all
reasonable modes of discipline to enforce order and uniformity.
Pope Pius V. had scarcely assumed the tiara, before he put forth a Bull
against heretics, " In the name of the Holy Trinity, of the Blessed Mother of
God, of St. Peter and St. Paul, of the holy host of heaven, of the archangels
and angels, of the holy apostles, saints, and martyrs," willing and authorizing all
the wise and learned of his Clergy, to labour, endeavour, and contrive all
* Lodge's Illustrations.
412 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1566.
manner of devices, to abate, assuage, and confound them ; anathematizing all
heretics, living, trading, or travelling in any colonies, principalities, realms and
countries, subject to the see of St. Peter, his predecessor ; that thereby they
might either be reclaimed, or a total infamy be brought upon them, by their
discord and divisions — by which means, they might either speedily perish by
God's wrath, or continue in eternal difference.*
We are sorry to say, this Bull exhibits but a too just picture of the devices,
properly so called, against which Cecil had constantly to guard his country
and his Sovereign, as we shall have occasion to shew. It was dated on the 6th
of the Ides of May at Rome — and contained dispensations for every insidious
compliance with the new doctrines, tenets, laws, and manners, of the heretics,
which might tend to throw them into confusion, or in any way promote the
interests of the holy see of Rome. — A Jesuit of great authority was dispatched
from Paris to Ireland, to instruct the Pope's emissaries, how to assume every
disguise, and disseminate every false doctrine they could invent, and a private
agent from the Pope was especially sent into England, under colour of an
Italian factor. This man's name was Ridolpho ; and we shall find him doino-
his utmost to set the Papists against the Queen, and very officiously meddling
in the concerns of Scotland.
An account will be found in Strype (Annals, i. ch. xlviii.) under this year, of
the Secretary's attention to an address made to him by the Governor of Jersey,
to stay, if possible, the departure of a learned foreigner from that island, who in
the character of a schoolmaster or instructor of youth, had wrought such good
there, that it was hoped he might be induced to stay, if the Secretary could
procure him to be naturalized, by the Queen's letters-patent. The consequence
was that he was induced to stay, having with him there his father and mother.
His name was Adrian Saravia, a native of the Low Countries, eminent after-
wards in the Church, and a great defender of episcopacy against Beza. The
following is the letter he wrote to Cecil (whom he called his patron), when he
had made up his mind to continue at Jersey.
" Ornatissimo Viro Guilielmo Cecilio patrono suo, Adrianus Saravius", S.P.D.
" Nequa forte animi levitate aut inconstantia, vir ornatissime, factum putes,
quod, ut statueram, ad meos Belgas me non contulerim, rationem tibi paucis
exponam ; dimissionem a fratibus, qui hie sunt, impetrare non potui; abire autem
* In the Bull of Canonization of Pius V., 1712; among his high virtues entitling him to such
honours, this is one, his •' unhesitating zeal in striking with his dread anathema, the impious
heretic QUEEN ELIZABETH, the pretended Queen of England. "
1566.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 41 ;j
ipsis invitis cum mala ipsorum gratia, mihi res prorsus indigna visum est;
propterea ego hie habeo apud me utrumque meum parentem, quos, Gandavo,
cum turbae illic inciperent, revocavi. At me, cum illis, uxore et liberis, inturbu-
lentam prsecipitare tempestatem, cum quid opus hoc rerum statu patriae mess
afferre queam, incertus sum, consilium mihi visum non est. Hi sunt trabales
clavi, qui me hie affixum detinuerunt. Interea mi domine, si tibi indignus non
videar, municeps et civis vester fieri vehementer cupio ; de hac gente nihil scribo,
nisi quod nunquam sibi sit futura dissimilis, vale. Guerzea. prid. cal. Februarii."
We learn from Lord Burghley 's Diary, that he had in the course of this year
two severe fits of illness.
" May 6. I was sore sick at Greenwich;" and,
" November 29. I was first grieved with the gout, in the Parliament time at
Westminster, and hardly used, by means of Justice Browne, as the Earl of
Sussex can tell." What connexion the latter circumstance had with his illness,
we are at a loss to say, unless by the exhibition of some nostrum for a cure ;
which was so commonly the case in those days, that from the papers in the
Museum, we might almost venture to affirm, that Lord Burghley never laboured
under any fit of sickness, without his friends and acquaintance, from all parts,
prescribing for him. We do not, however, mean to speak seriously of this being
a right interpretation of Justice Browne's hard usage, though we know not
what else it relates to.
Lord Burghley records the death of two eminent men, as having occurred on
the same day in this year, April 21. "Sir Richard Sacltville, under Treasurer
of the Exchequer, and Sir John Mason* Treasurer of the Chamber, died both
in one day;" and then follows, " Sir Walter Mildmay, made Chancellor and
under Treasurer of the Exchequer, anno 8vo. Eliz." — " An upright and most
advised man," says Camden ; of whom we shall have more to say hereafter.
* See of Sir John Mason, vol. i. 663. and Lodge's Illustrations of British History, vol. i. '277.
Sir Richard Sackville had been of the Privy Council in the reigns of Edward and Mary. He first
studied the law, and became so great a proficient in it, as to be appointed the Lent-reader at
Gray's Inn, in the time of Henry VIII. His mother was a Bullen, and nearly related to the
Queen's mother. He-became exceedingly rich before he died, and had the nickname given him it
Fill-sack, which, so far from implying covetousness, as many have thought, is judged by Collins
only to have bespoke the good success of a wise and prudent economy. As he represented suc-
cessively the counties of Kent and Sussex, it is not to be supposed that he could be guilty of so
unpopular a failure as parsimony. He was father to the first Earl of Dorset, the celebrated poet.
Sir William Cecil, as well as the successor of Sir Richard in the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay,
was made one of his ex ecutors.
CHAP VIII.
1567.
Ninth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign commenced November 17, 1566.
Darnley's illness — Of Mary and Bothwell — Darnley's murder — Passage from Bishop
~ Grindal's letter to Bullinger — Melvil's account of Mary, Darnley, and Bothwell — Of
Mary's conduct towards Darnley — Bothwell's trial — Baton's letter to Mary — Mary car-
ried to Bothwell's castle — Bothwell divorced — Mary marries him — Bothwell tries to get
possession of the young Prince — Mary surrenders herself — Bothwell's flight — Throckmor-
ton sent by Elizabeth — Mary's resignation — James crowned — Murray Regent — Fate of
Bothwell — Overtures of marriage with the Archduke— Lord Sussex sent — Sir H. Sydney
Lord Deputy of Ireland— Calais — Shan O'Niel — Confederacy of the Popish States —
Articles of it — Incessant applications to Cecil — Attack on the Clergy — Dean Nowell —
Dorman — Bishop Jewel — Attempt in Lancashire to restore Popery — Bishop of Carlisle
—Faithful Cummin — Death of Dr. Nicholas Wotton — Queen's Progresses.
AT the very commencement of this year we are naturally brought back to the
melancholy account of proceedings in Scotland, it being equally the last year of
Darnley's life and of Mary's freedom. But we need not dwell long on the
very dismal and distressing circumstances of this eventful period of our history,
because no other history perhaps has been so often related, or so critically and
closely examined in all its parts. Could we have unhesitatingly decided in
favour of Mary's innocence, we do not feel that we have any purposes to answer
by proclaiming her guilt, except to account for the conduct of those who did
not believe her to be innocent. Guilty or innocent, we think all that followed
in regard to England, will be found to have principally depended on other
circumstances. — Were we indeed ever so persuaded, that Mary had no concern
whatever in the death of Darnley, we should feel obliged to confess, that she
could scarcely have done more to excite the liveliest suspicions of it, than by the
course she is on all hands allowed to have pursued ; the ground for such suspi-
cions requires to be examined, therefore, in common justice to those who have
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 415
been accused, not only of slandering, but of cruelly persecuting, the pure and
innocent ; and none more so than the subject of this Memoir, as we have but too
often occasion to remind the reader. Darnley parted from the Queen in anger
and disgust, after the ceremony of the royal baptism at Stirling ; in anger,
because he was deprived of all the regal honours and distinctions profusely
bestowed on him at first ; in disgust, because he felt that while he was discarded
and dishonoured in his own person, others were admitted to so extraordinary a
degree of favour and confidence, as might very naturally have excited the most
lively jealousy in stronger and less suspicious minds than his was known to be.
Bothwell's principles and general conduct, were by no means such as to justify
the extraordinary attentions paid to him, at such a moment, by a female of such
attractions as Mary must have known herself to be. Two impediments stood
in Bothwell's way, if he looked to any participation of her throne and her bed,
and both impediments were in a very short time removed, and Mary actually
married to the very person, of whom the discarded and degraded Darnley was
most jealous, when he quitted the Court to go to Glasgow, with a settled and,
to all appearance, an irremovable purpose of passing beyond sea.*
Immediately on his leaving Stirling to proceed to Glasgow, he was seized
with a very alarming and unsightly illness ; his blood being so affected, and
his disfigurement so great, that he was supposed to be poisoned, an event much
too common in those days to excite any great degree of surprise. Had he died
one of Bothwell's impediments would have been effectually removed. t Her
heart already to all appearance estranged, Mary's hand would have been free
again, and one only impediment would have still stood in Bothwell's way
towards a matrimonial union with the high and accomplished Queen of Scots;
in fact, Lady Bothwell was living, a sister of the Earl of Huntley.
Notwithstanding the sudden and strange illness with which Darnley had been
seized on quitting Stirling, he was able to reach Glasgow, and, contrary to
expectation, seemed to be so much in the way to overcome the complaint, that
in a short time, perhaps, he might have been able to fulfil his purposes of quit-
ting Scotland, and proceeding to the Continent. This would have been no
* We might, perhaps, refer the reader at once to Hume; but as those who have most calum-
niated the great statesman whose life we are writing have appeared since Hume, and in opposi-
tion to him, we cannot avoid going over much of the same ground.
t It seems certain that Mary sent her own physician to visit him in his illness. The suspicion
of poison seems to rest on very weak grounds.
416 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
removal of the grand impediment to Bothwell's marriage with the Queen, for
he would have still continued, and appeared in foreign Courts, as her husband
and King of Scotland.* A divorce indeed had been proposed to Mary by
Murray's party, but such a separation, she seems to have thought, might have
affected the succession of her son, as heir both to Scotland and England ; besides
Mary does not appear to have wished, by a divorce, to restore Murray to the
situation he formerly held as her Minister.
It was under these circumstances that she took the resolution of going to
Glasgow, to be reconciled to Darnley, to comfort him in his illness, to turn him
aside, if possible, from his design of passing from Glasgow (where he had a
vessel prepared), to foreign parts, and to induce him, for change of air, to pass
to the very opposite side of Scotland ; in fact, to Edinburgh ; not to the palace,
but a separate dwelling, where it was alleged the air was purer and the chance
of recovery greater. He consented to the removal, and to every other arrange-
ment that had been made for him. Mary attended upon him, in the house
assigned for his dwelling, and sometimes slept in a room nigh to his ; but being
* One of Mary's advocates has a strange way of defending her from all participation in
Darnley's death ; he thinks nothing could have been morefavonrable to her purposes, than to have
allowed him to go ahroad. " Le depart de Darnley ne lui etoit-il pas plus favorable que tout
ce qu' elle pouvoit imaginer; elle demeuroit en liberte, sa passion pour Bothwell pouvoit eclater
sans contrainte, et Henri hors du Royaume, elle pouvoit lui en interduire le retour, et mfeme
dans les pays etrangers, le faire perir loin d' elle par des mains inconnues." Surely this is little
better than admitting that she went the shortest way to work, if her accusers have any ground to
stand on ; which is the only question in dispute. Tytler makes (or rather adopt) the same
mistake of fancying that Darnley's departure into foreign countries would have served Mary's
purposes better, supposing her attached to Bothwell, than the keeping him at home; and he
looks upon it as a thing clearly proved, that Mary's endeavours to prevent Darnley from leaving
the kingdom, proceeded entirely from tenderness and affection for him. And yet the Earl of
Bedford, who by all accounts was really a good man, had assured Cecil in August, 1566, that
she did in no manner dissemble her dislike of Darnley, and had fallen out with Melvil for giving
the King a dog, declaring she could trust no one who would give any thing to such a one as she
loved not. She had indeed but too much reason to be offended with Darnley ; but the question
is, whether her affection for him was ever so thoroughly restored as her advocates pretend, and
which makes a great difference as to the real character of the events which afterwards took place.
The Earl of Bedford's letter may be seen in Robertson's appendix, No. xvii. vol. ii. 47.— Mad1",
de Ktralio, who is profuse in her admiration of Mary's conduct in visiting her sick husband at
Glasgow, is not disposed to agree with Stuart, in supposing that it proceeded from an absolute
return of affection. " Marie Stuart," she says, " ne pouvoit aimer Darnley— mais son ame
sensible pouvoit pardunner, &c."
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 417
one night called away, to attend a masque or fete at the palace, in honour of
the marriage of one of her household, she took a particular leave of the King,
putting a ring upon his finger in token of her love, and that very night he was
destroyed, and the house blown to atoms by gunpowder !
It is true the Queen might be innocent of all this. One impediment, however,
to Bothwell's wishes, was now effectually removed. We may assuredly be
allowed to ask, did Mary allow him to take advantage of it ? Yes ; she made no
objection to the removal of the other impediment, namely, the divorce of Lady
Bothwell, and after the pretence (we can never bring ourselves to look upon it
otherwise) of a violent ravishment and seizure of her person, consented to marry
the very man who stood, most suspected of the murder committed. — We can only
say, if she were not guilty, the weakest woman that ever lived could not have
given greater advantages to her enemies ; advantages which we think have
acquired additional force of late from the injudicious course taken by some of
her avowed advocates ; for it must surely be admitted, that no person had
ever greater occasion given her to guard against appearances, than Mary at this
time. It is only to defend those who we think have been made to bear more
blame than of right attaches to them, that we can bring ourselves to insist so
much on the imprudencies (to say no worse at present) of this most unfortunate
Princess. One of those too zealous advocates to whom we have alluded (and
no less eminent a person than Professor Tytler), thus writes of the Queen's
voluntary reconcilement with Darnley: "The Queen, on Christmas eve, as a
deed of charity and benevolence suitable to that solemn festival, granted a free
pardon to Morton, Lindsay, and seventy-five more accomplices, in the murder of
her Secretary ! Was it strange that the heart which could pardon the perpetra-
tors of so black a murder, attended with such horrid circumstances as to herself,
should expand, and receive into grace Lord Darnley, who had been seduced by
their artifice ? Darnley, the husband of her affection, the father of her infant
son, now a penitent, and on the bed of sickness?" He then proceeds to exclaim
in most bitter terms against those who could so much as insinuate, that there was
any artifice or dissimulation in this, observing, that merely to suppose such a
thing, was to impute to " the tender-hearted and affectionate Queen Mary, a
most inhuman, deliberate, and remorseless murder;" indeed, he introduces these
horrid consequences of supposing her guilty with an " horresco referens ;" in
justice then to those who may have been misled by appearances, we feel bound
in a Life of Lord Burghley, one of her reputed enemies, to state what those
VOL. n. 3 H
418 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
appearances were. The free and gracious pardon of Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, &c.
is said above to have been granted on Christmas eve in honour of the season. This
was but a few weeks after the celebrated conferences at Craigmillar. The pur-
port of which, on the part of Murray, Lethington, Huntley, Argyle, and Both-
well, has, on all sides, been represented to be an effort to procure the Queen's
pardon for Morton, &c., on an express stipulation that she should be released
from Darnley by a formal divorce (to which Mary objected), or by some other
undefined mode of separation, which was, it should be observed, left undefined to
the last ; that Mary desired that it should be some lawful expedient, and neither
injurious to herself or her son is most true; but she allowed Maitland to utter all
manner of reproaches against Darnley, and was easily brought to consent to the
other measure of pardoning Morton and his party for a most atrocious crime
(especially in persons of their rank in life and age), while Darnley, still only a
youth of twenty, and who, Professor Tytler himself says, had been " seduced by
their artifice," was to be divested of his crown, if not of his life ; for two of the
party, Huntley and Argyle, professed afterwards to have understood that violence
to his person had been contemplated at Craigmillar. In the meanwhile Darnley
was in the way to give them the slip, by going beyond sea as soon as he should
be sufficiently recovered ; but in January, Mary, as her advocates insist, became
suddenly disposed to be reconciled to the King, and extremely anxious for his
recovery ; to which end, as Sir W. Drury wrote to Cecil, she designed to go, as
he had heard, to fetch him away from Glasgow, and which indeed took place
accordingly; but whither, and into what company did she carry him? To
Edinburgh, indeed, but not to the palace; and to those very persons, Both well
amongst the number, whom she knew to have an expedient in their head for
dissolving the marriage bond, and some of whom besides, she must have known
to be capable of committing or countenancing murder ; and ten days only after
the young King's arrival, he was murdered !
We would not wish to impose upon any person living, the arduous and labo-
rious task of reading the many accounts we have felt it our duty to read, in
elucidation of these disastrous events ;* but we cannot hesitate to repeat, that
if Mary were innocent, she seems, as to all the moral proofs of guilt, to have
been led so willingly to the consummation of Bothwell's wicked purposes, as to
* Pinkerton offered to answer all that had been alleged by writers in favour of Mary Q>ieen
of Scots in a one shilling pamphlet, but not in a less space of time than Jiie years.
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 419
leave no doubt on our minds as to the tendency and bent of her own inclina-
tions.*
We have dwelt merely on the most acknowledged and undisputed facts, and
are quite willing now to leave them to the judgment of the reader, as cir-
cumstances leading, we think, but too regularly to the further catastrophe of
her removal from the seat of Government^ not as an act of justice so much as
of necessity ; and yet not altogether of necessity, had the times been different,
or had the admirable limitations of regal power, without any degradation of
the prerogatives or honour of the crown, now admitted among us, been known
or reduced to practice in any part or portion of the civilized world. We
must consider what were the opinions prevalent at this time in Europe, in regard
to the power of Princes. On one side stood the Pope, ready to depose all
heretical Princes and Potentates, by a Papal Bull, sacred in the eyes of every
zealous Catholic, and more so, perhaps, now than ever ; because, amongst
heretics it was losing its force, and required, therefore, to be upheld by all the
severities of an inquisitorial court. On the other side stood the Calvinists, pre-
pared to reduce the regal power, not merely within the limits of popular election
or choice, but of moral fitness and personal qualifications for the government of
a state or kingdom. Elizabeth's crown was in danger from the force of the first
prejudice, and Mary's of the second. In the peculiar state of Scotland, at that
time, she could not, perhaps, have done herself a greater injury, than to appear
careless of the consequences of any immoral act, or deviation from the paths of
moral rectitude, not to mention her Romish prejudices, connexions, and attach-
ments.
But it is time that we should speak more particularly of the exact course of
events.
Darnley appears to have left Stirling soon after the baptism of his son, De-
cember, 1566. On the 20th of January, 1566-7, Mary wrote a letter to her
' Tytler certainly overdoes the matter, by representing her, even at this time, to have been a
perfect paragon of virtue, tenderness, and purity.
t We have the following curious passage in a letter of Bishop Grindal, to the celebrated Bui-
linger in Switzerland, so strongly resting upon the mere fact of Mary's marriage with Bothwell as
to deserve to be transcribed. His letter being dated June 21, 1567. — " Quomodocunque sit,
infames illae nuptisc, non possunt non in aliquam dirarn tragsediam desinere." We must re-
member that this was written at the time, and nearly twenty years before the last act of the tragedy
took place; but it is surely no false assignment of the beginning of the tragedy.
420 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
Ambassador in France, in which are to be found no tokens of reconciliation or
returning affection; and yet, almost immediately afterwards, she repaired to
Glasgow, and by a show of reconciliation and kindly attentions, so wrought
upon the King's mind, awakened, perhaps, to a renewed regard and affection
on his part, as to induce him to submit to be conveyed by her directions, in a
litter, to Edinburgh, to a lonely house half a mile from the palace, called the Kirk
of Field, where, during the night of the 9th of February, he and a servant in attend-
ance upon him, were deprived of their lives in some unknown and extraordinary
manner ; for though the room in which they slept was destroyed by gunpowder,
and the very foundations of the house removed, their dead bodies were found in
an adjacent garden, with no symptoms upon them of a death so violent, as must
have been expected from an explosion of that nature.*
Lord Burghley has, in his notes, two entries referring to the event.
" Feb. 9. The L. Darnly, K. of Scotts, was killed and murdered near
Edenburgh."
The second is more explicit, as to the precise authors of the murder.
- 10. Hora secunda post mediam noctem. Hen. Rex Scotiae interfec-
tus fuir, per Jac. Co. Bothwell, Jac. Ormeston de Ormston, Hob. Ormston,
patrem dicti Jac. Ormston, Tho. Hepbourn."f
There can be no doubt that the murder was no sooner committed, than Both-
well was accused of being the murderer ; nor had Mary's conduct and actions
been so guarded, to say the least of them, as to screen her from the weight of
similar imputations. It was necessary, in order to satisfy the public, to
* Since the above was written, Mr. Turner has brought together from Keith, Anderson, Melvil,
and others, the most circumstantial points. — See his xxiii. Letter, Book ii. He has also noticed
the confessions taken, but with caution, as he is in no manner disposed to put more confidence in
them, than every particular case would seem to warrant.
t This was, probably, the first account Sir William received, and it happens to agree exactly
with what was afterwards reported to the Queen by Throckmorton, July 18, 1567.— Goorfa//',?
Preface, xvii. In the mean while Cecil's information seems to have had no real certainty in it,
for on the 20th of February he wrote to Sir Henry Norris, as may be seen in the Cabala, " The
most suspicion that I can hear is of the Earl of Bothwell." And again, " The common speech
toucheth the Earls of Bothwell and Huntley, who remain with the Queen." Lastly, on March 21,
'•' The common fame in Scotland continueth upon the Earl of Bothwell to be the principal
murderer of the King, and the Queen's name is not well spoken of." How much Mary was
suspected all over Europe, she was informed by her own Ambassador at Paris, tl e Archbishop
of Glasgow.
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 421
make some show of willingness to bring the culprit to account for an atrocity
so great, and a formal proclamation was made, to summon accusers. Bothwell,
however, still continuing at large, and in as much favour as ever with the
Queen,* the King's father, Lord Lennox, was not tardy in demanding vengeance
to be had of the guilty person, and Bothwell was, in the end, openly and pub-
licly accused by him ; but, through a default of evidence, in consequence of
the haste with which the proceedings were carried on, and the accused ap-
pearing with an alarming force of vassals and followers to overawe all opposed
to him, even the Judges of the Court, he was formally acquitted. j" The
indecent precipitation with which these things were conducted, J the little
attention paid to Lennox, who solicited a longer delay to collect his witnesses,
the bold effrontery with which Bothwell conducted himself, even sitting in the
very Council assembled to appoint and arrange his trial, only tended the more
to inflame the minds of the people. Placards were stuck up, and banners
displayed, proclaiming his guilt, and not sparing the Queen. Lennox felt
himself so ill used, as even to apply to Elizabeth for her interposition to stay
the trial, but all in vain. Neither Lennox nor Elizabeth could prevail to pro-
cure any postponement, so that the accusers being absolutely precluded from
making their appearance according to the customary forms of law, the process
was dropped, and a sentence of acquittal pronounced, for want of the accusation
being supported on the day of trial, as it was pretended. But Melvil's
account, who was on the spot, is as follows: " Every body," he says, " sus-
pected thg Earl of Bothwell, and those who durst speak freely to others said that
it was he ; whereupon he drew together a number of Lords, of his dependers, to
* Melvil's account is most extraordinary, in regard to the conduct of the Queen and Bothwell.
He tells us, " that on the very next morning after the mvrder (and even he calls it so), he came to
the door of the Queen's chamber, and the Earl of Bot/iwcll said, that her Majesty was sorrowful
and quiet, which occasioned him to come forth. He said, the strangest accident had fallen out
which ever was heard of, for thunder had come out of the sky, and had burnt the King's house,
and himself was found lying a little distance from the house under a tree. He desired me to go up
and see him, how that there was not a hurt or a mark on all his body; but, when I went up to
'see him, he had been taken up to a chamber, and kept by one Alexander Denham, and I could
not get a sight of him."
•)- See Anderson, Keith, and Laing.
t Mad"e. Keralio has been at great pains to clear the Queen of all participation in this hurried
process of acquittal ; but as she seems to think that Mary judged Bothwell to be innocent, it is
impossible to place much reliance on her arguments.
422 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
be an Assize, which cleared and acquitted him. Some for fear, some for favour,
and the greatest part in expectation of advantage. This way being assailed,
he remained still the greatest favourite at Court." The trial, indeed, was not
allowed to take place before the Queen. In addition to numerous other lucra-
tive appointments, she dislodged the Earl of Mar from the government of
Edinburgh Castle, and bestowed it on Bothwell; thus giving him custody of
the chiefest fortress in the kingdom. How little consonant must this have been
to the advice of her Ambassador at Paris, Archbishop Beton, to whom she
had written on the death of the King. This respectable Prelate (for he cer-
tainly was so, see vol. i. p. 101 .), in his reply, had expressed to her the horror
excited in France by the account of the murder ; he had announced to her the
fact of her being herself suspected ; had availed himself of the circumstance
insisted upon by herself, of her own providential and miraculous escape, to
urge upon her the absolute necessity of discovering and punishing the offen-
ders, to redeem her reputation from obloquy ; for the sinister interpretations
and reproaches of Europe, he adds, were " ow'r (over) odious to rehearse."
Elizabeth gave her the same advice, when writing to her on Lennox's request
to postpone the trial ; but which Mary's advocates scruple not to call insolent
and impertinent.— [See Laing's Dissertation on the Murder of Darnley.J Mr.
Turner has placed this whole transaction in a very striking point of view, and
certainly with strong marks of impartiality.
The next step taken in the business, if Buchanan and Camden are right, was
one so extraordinary, as hitherto to have baffled the utmost pains of the most
eminent historians to account for it. Bothwell, at a great entertainment he
gave, procured a paper to be signed by the Nobles who had attended the
Parliament, immediately after his acquittal, actually recommending him to the
Queen as the most proper person she could choose for a husband. The difficulty
of accounting for this is the greater, because it was signed by persons of the
most adverse parties;* and, as it would appear, by some of the Queen's best
friends, who were not blind to the hazard she would be incurring by a measure
so extraordinary, in all its circumstances, as to rnarry the reputed murderer of,
her former husband ; a man of dissolute and abandoned habits, the husband of
* Whitaker has gone as far as any into the scrutiny of these signatures, as they are to be
found in .Sir James Balfour's copy of the Bond, in the Scotch College at Paris, and in what is
called Cecil's copy (which he prefers) in the Museum.— Cotton. MSS. Caligula, c. i. 1.
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 423
another woman, and of no repute in other countries. If any case can be com-
pared with this, perhaps we may find something similar in the transaction upon
which we felt obliged to dwell so long in our first volume, we mean that of
the Duke of Northumberland, in his attempts to set the Lady Jane Grey on the
throne of England. Some perhaps, in this case, as well as in the other, signed
through intimidation (for Both well, it is asserted by many, had been careful to
have the house surrounded at the time with his dependants armed); some,
through a carelessness as to the consequences, * supposing it would prove
nugatory and invalid, as any deliberate act of their own ; some, perhaps, for
private ends, to be answered by Bothwell's elevation ; and finally, some, per-
haps, in confidence that his rashness would ruin him.f
But there were still two acts more remaining to be performed of this
extraordinary drama; (for fiction seems to have been at the bottom of all.) It
was judged necessary that the Queen should not assent so willingly to the
match, as to appear to be the author of it ; or, as some have alleged, a fresh
crime was to be committed, that, by a pardon for the latter, all former crimes
might be covered, according to the custom of Scotland, where the particular
crime for which a pardon was granted being specified, it was usual to add,
" and all other wicked acts." Bothwell therefore having, according to Bu-
chanan and Camden, armed himself with the public instrument before spoken
of, not only recommending him to the Queen as her third husband, but con-
taining promises of support and defence, in the prosecution of his designs, from
the first Nobles of the land, seized an opportunity of so intercepting her on a
journey, as to leave her no choice of doing otherwise than accept him, according
to the terms prescribed by the Nobility : he met her near Linlithgow, dispersed
* Hume can discover no reason for this extraordinary confederacy, but that all the subscribers
were firmly persuaded that Mary was fully determined to marry him. Still he thinks they were
taken by surprise.
-(• Mary's advocates, of course, refer the whole proceeding to Murray, for the ruin of Mary as
well as Bothwell ; and it has been insisted upon, though he could not have been present; that
his name stood first among the subscribers. We have no occasion to enter into the controversy,
as it is fully discussed in other books ; though it seems to have been a good deal overlooked,
that Murray's name might have been forged, as the Queen's warrant is said to have been. Alto-
gether it may be placed among the mysteries of this most extraordinary story, which it is
scarcely necessary to clear up, since, however recommended, Mary should not have married
Bothwel/.
424 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
the small train that attended her, seized on her person, and conveyed her, with
as few attendants as possible, to his castle at Dunbar.*
If it be inquired, whether this high-spirited Princess made any resistance
to so gross an indignity, it must be answered, No.f Melvil was one of her
courtiers, in actual attendance upon her, and he has by his silence, at least,
avouched for its having been otherwise ; he was told indeed, he says, by one
of Both well's attendants, that it was done "with the Queen's own consent."
" We have placed the above transactions in the order in which they stand in Buchanan and
Camden, who concur in putting the letter of approbation before the seizure of Mary's person, making
the latter a consequence of the former. But as Rapin is more disposed to follow Melvil, and
thinks Camden had an interest in misplacing the facts, and misrepresenting the purport of the
paper, we shall subjoin Melvil's account, who clearly speaks of the consent of the Lords as
obtained subsequently to the seizure, alleging the latter as one reason for it, though a strange
one certainly; and indeed his account cannot but be wrong, from the dates preserved. — (See
Laing and Whitake r). " Shortly after her Majesty went to Stirling, and in her back-coming,
betwixt Linlithgow and Edinburgh, the Earl of Both well rencountered her with a great com-
pany, and took her Majesty's horse by the bridle ; his men took the Earl of Huntley, the Secretary
Liddington, and me, and carried us captives to Dunbar: all the rest were permitted to go free.
There the Earl of Bothwell boasted he would marry the Queen, who would or would not; yea,
whether she would herself or not. Captain Blackater, who had taken me, alleged that it was
with the Queen's own consent. The next day, in Dunbar, I obtained permission to go home.
Afterward the Court came to Edinburgh, and there a number of Noblemen were drawn together
in a chamber within the Palace, where they all subscribed a paper, declaring, that they judged
it was much the Queen's interest to marry Bothwell, he having many friends in Lothian, and
upon the borders, which would cause good order to be kept. And then the Queen could not
but marry him, seeing he had ravished her, and lain with her against her will." — By the Duke
of Norfolk's letter to Elizabeth, from York, Oct. 11, 1568, the consent of the Lords seems to
have been obtained on the 19th of April, and the subduction of the Queen to have taken place
on the 24th. — (Gooilall, Appendix, No. xlvii. from Cotton. Calig. c. i.) The Duke also
states, that it was told him by Lethington, that the latter event took place with the Queen's
consent, and was designed to cover, by the pardon to be obtained afterwards, all the charges
about the King's murder ; for treason was a greater crime than murder!— (Ib.) " A fit policy,"
says the Duke, " for a detestable fact."
t Very different was her conduct in regard to the unfortunate Chatelard, who had imprudently
secreted himself in her chamber, after receiving attentions from her so particular, as to be '
offensive to the Nobles attending the Court. After in vain urging Murray to stab him, she
caused him to be tried and beheaded; and he died, as Brantome relates, exclaiming, " Adieu,
la plus belle, et la plus cruelle Princesse du monde !"— (See Diet. Historique, art. Chatelard.) He
had become enamoured of her in France, during the life of her husband, " et on pretend," says
the editor, " que cette Princesse ne fut pas insensible a ses soupirs."
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 425
And indeed we can scarcely judge otherwise, when we know that Bothwell
and his thousand horsemen [800, Hume], passed the preceding night at Hatton,
only eight miles from Linlithgow, where the Queen was ; she could scarcely,
therefore, be ignorant of his designs. — [Laing's Dissertation, 29.] " But,"
says Whitaker, " is it to be concluded, that because she did not resist she was
willing? So might it be inferred that Charles I. suffered willingly on the
scaffold." But he forgets that she was set free again, before she accepted him
for a husband, and used her freedom immediately to choose him, in preference
to all others.
Still there was one who stood in the way of the full accomplishment of his
designs. Six months only before the death of Darnley, Bothwell had married
the Lady Jean Gordon, sister to the Earl of Huntley. It was necessary, there-
fore, to make this unfortunate lady accessary to a process of divorce. This
also was conducted with as much precipitation as his own trial, and if not with
as little credit to the Judges who decided the case, certainly with as little
credit to the Earl himself as possible ; for the Countess was made to bring her
accusations against him, and to sue for her own divorce from him, on the
ground of his having committed adultery, incest, and I know not what other
crimes besides ; and as soon as their separation was accomplished, by the
sentence of the Civil as well as the Ecclesiastical Courts [see Hume], and so
as to satisfy both Protestants and Papists, the Queen was released from her
state of captivity at Dunbar, in order to give her a power of making a free
choice of another husband ;* a freedom which she exercised immediately, by
choosing (the immaculate!) Bothwell, who was presently made Duke of
Orkney; and on the 15th of May, fourteen weeks only after the death of
Darnley, they were married.
These are \hefacts (stripped as much as possible of all adventitious circum-
stances) which compel us, irresistibly compel us, to decide against Mary. We
have been as brief as we could be (whoever is the least conversant with the
many histories that have been written upon the subject, will know how much
more we could have said), because we wish to look to the facts only, as cor-
roborative of all that former writers have alleged against her, to prove that she
* See the Declaration of the Queen's Liberty (Goodall, ii. 242, No. xc.) ; rather an extraor-
dinary document for such an advocate of Mary's innocence to produce. See also the Journal
of the Queen's Proceedings, No. xcii. called the pretended Journal ; but, quaere, — why so ?
VOL. II. 3 I
426 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
was in a great measure the cause of her own misfortunes. It may be said she
was betrayed ; innocently drawn into the plots of others ; defenceless as a
female ; unsuspicious, from the amiableness of her own disposition ; but, if we
look to her character, as displayed upon other occasions, these excuses seem to
fail her. She had judgment, and wisdom, and penetration enough, not to be so
easily betrayed by any body. Bothwell's character* and circumstances, as a
married man, were well enough known, to alarm her innocence. Lady Both-
well's suit alone was sufficient, any virtuous woman might think. A female
who could go armed into the field, in pursuit of a band of refractory subjects,
and is known to have declared, that she would die sooner than renounce her
title of Queen, should not have felt defenceless where her virtue and character
were both assailed, by the rude attacks of Bothwell, and in the very midst of
attendants, who, if called upon,f might have afforded her some help at least.
She had married Darnley in defiance of Elizabeth ; and surely she might have
rejected Bothwell, in defiance of her own Nobles. £ Lastly, if the amiableness
of her own disposition might be supposed to have rendered her unsuspicious of
any evil designs in others, she should, at least, have listened to the forewarnino-s
of those who had such suspicions, and did not conceal them from her, as her
* It is curious to read the character of Bothwell, as given by Conceits, Mary's great friend and
advocate. He describes him as being " Hominem ad pessima natum, crudelem, vanum, gloriceque
quorois facinore appetentem." — 78. Sir Henry Norris, at this time in embassy at Paris, has the
following among his short memorandums, published in Howard's Collection of Letters, Ike.
"Anno 1567. The Queen of Scots married the vile Bothwell the 15th of May, being created
Duke of Orkney the 12th of May, 1,067."
t Mad"5, de Keralio has very impartially taken an account of the different relations of this
transaction, and especially of the Queen's own conduct on the occasion, and has come to the
conclusion, that a great majority of them are silent as to any resistance, or reproaches, cast
upon Bothwell, by Mary. She does not, however, believe that Mary consented, but was entirely
governed by circumstances, and unable to extricate herself. She thinks it absurd to suppose
she could be enamoured of a man, whom she concludes to have been not less than sixty years
old ; but Lady Bothwell's suit against him, as a ground of divorce, shews that he was not passed
the age of gallantry. She herself had been married to him only six months before. And Hume
has a note, to prove that he was, probably, no more than thirty when he married Mary, citing her
own instructions to the Bishop of Dunblain, only eight years before (1559), in which she speaks
of him as being then " very young."— (See vol. v. note n, 8vo. edit. 1797.) This author says,
Lady Bothwell had been married two years.
I See Laing's references to Bin ell's Diary and Crawford's MSS., and his very just remark on
Whitaker's cavils. — Dissertation, SI, 82.
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 427
Catholic friends in England, through both the Melvils,* Lord Herries (as it is
said), the Bishop of Ross, and even Queen Elizabeth, who pointed out to her
the loss of character with which such a marriage must be attended ; but all in
vain. It is true, some of these remonstrances are very much disputed ; but
there is scarcely any thing left undisputed in this deplorable case.f
It will be asked, perhaps (says Rapin, and we cannot do better than copy his
words), " Where is the necessity of clearing this fact in the History of England?
I answer, There is an absolute necessity, because, otherwise Queen Elizabeth's
conduct will be either inconceivable or misunderstood. The history, therefore,
as well as truth, requires a distinct knowledge of the foundation of Queen Eliza-
beth's politics, and of the. real cause of the events which will be related hereafter.
This fact is as the hinge on which all the affairs of England and Scotland turn
for many years;" and soon after, " The knowledge of the affairs in Scotland is
so absolutely necessary for understanding the motives of Queen Elizabeth's
conduct and politics, that it is not to be thought strange, that I have given so
particular an account of what passed in that kingdom."
The same author proceeds to weigh and balance the authority of the three
principal writers, on whose testimony at that time it was customary to rely,
Camden, Buchanan, and Melvil; very fairly drawing the conclusion, that though
not one of them is to be implicitly credited, yet that Buchanan and Melvil being
contemporaries of the transactions, and eye-witnesses of much that passed, and
often agreeing in their accounts without writing in concert, are more to be
credited than Camden, who evidently wrote under a strong bias, and probably
to please James,J who then occupied the English throne, as well as that of Scot-
land, favoured Mary beyond what the truth would warrant.
* See the account of Thomas Bishop's letter from England, addressed to Sir James Melvil,
and which the latter shewed to the Queen ; but to no other effect, than to aff.;d her an occasion
of representing it to the Secretary Lethington, to be a device of his own to ruin Bothwell, and
a caution fiom Lethington himself to Sir James to keep out of the way, or Bothwell would
certainly have him killed.— (Memoirs, 157.) As this is questioned by Tytler, with most severe
strictures upon MelviPs duplicity and general character, we can only refer to it, as a printed
record, which the reader may consult,
f !' D'apres les temoignages que nous avons concernant les pretendus avis que recut Marie
Stuart pour le projet de son manage avec Bothwell, il est presque impossible de demeler la
verite du mensonge ou de 1'erreur. La seule lettre d'Elisabeth est authentique." — (Keralio). In
Mary's answers to Elizabeth, the same author adds, " Elle ditaussi vaguement qu'elle a entendu
des l.ruits a son desavantage (Bothwell's) ; mais elle ne s'explique point a cet egard."
\ See Bayle, art. Camden.
428 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
It is well known how many other authors have since written upon the subject,
and what a contrariety of opinions an historian of the present day has to contend
with in order to arrive at any thing approaching to an absolute certainty ; but it
has appeared to us, that there are, in the case, some undoubted facts that speak
so plainly for themselves, as scarcely to leave room for any mistake ; every fact, it
is true, may admit of a different explanation, or be referred to different causes ;*
but in the case of facts that should on no account whatever have taken place, or
been suffered to take place, causes and explanations cease to be objects of any
very curious inquiry. If it be too much to say that Mary and Bothwell should
never have come together, it cannot be too much to say, that they should not
have come together at the time, and in the way they certainly did. And this is
almost as much as we have need to say, in taking a view of the first false steps
that led to Mary's ruin. After her marriage with Bothwell her fall indeed was
rapid ; she suffered mortifications even at the time of her marriage. Few of the
Nobility were present. The French Ambassador, Du Croc, though a dependant
of the House of Guise, refused to attend. The people manifested no joy, but
quite the contrary in the presence of the Queen; and even the minister who had
to publish the banns,t had boldly protested against the design.
* Whoever will be at the pains to read the accounts given by those writers who have been dis-
tinguished as Mary's advocates, of the course of events from Mary's visit to the King at Glasgow,
to his death, cannot but be struck with the totally different views that may be taken of the same
transactions ; but what is most horrible in the decision to be made between such opposite state-
ments, in the present instance, is, that those who cannot bring themselves to agree in all that
Mary's advocates allege, are left to the sad alternative of pronouncing one of the hardest sen-
tences against her that could be conceived ; for, according to the authors alluded to, every step
she took was calculated to prove her to be a very paragon of virtue, tenderness, and purity ; there
is no Christian grace, or moral perfection, for which she does not obtain credit at their hands, for
her advances at this time towards a reconciliation with Darnley, and for her great care about his
recovery ; merely to suspect the sincerity of such appearances is a most painful task, and yet we
know not how to join in the declamatory praises advanced on this occasion by others, considering
into whose hands the unhappy King was allowed to fall. Indeed, one of Mary's warmest defenders,
Madlle. de Keralio, admits, that though the snares laid fur Mary (for she thinks she was deceived
into what she did) were most artfully contrived, yet that, " la plus legere reflexion et le senti-
ment de sa dignit6 pouvoient la garantir, ou du moins la faire sortir triomphante et glorieuse."
+ Craig. — See a very good account of this worthy minister's conduct and remonstrances in
Mad"", de Keralio's history, after Spotswood, Knox, and Gilbert Stuart. Hume has given a dif-
ferent but less true account. I doubt, says Keith, if ever there was, before or since, a divorce,
and marriage upon a divorce, so scandalous as this.
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 429
In a very short time after the ceremony had been performed, Both well endea-
voured to get the young Prince into his power ; but the Earl of Mar, to whom the
Queen herself had committed the charge of him, positively refused to give the
Prince up to the man, so generally held, though acquitted, to have been the
murderer of his father. The Nobles began to perceive that it was already a
matter almost of necessity that they should interpose. The best motive they
could assign for the measures they contemplated, had been suggested to them
by the anxiety shewn by Both well to obtain possession of the royal infant. Many
no doubt looked farther, but there was reason for endeavouring to keep the
Prince out of the hands of Bothwell.* So soon had a change been wrought in
the minds of the parties, lately in confederacy, as it was pretended, to stand by
each other against all adversaries, that in one month only after this strange
marriage, we find the Nobles assembled in the field against Bothwell and the
Queen, under all the appearances of military array. An accommodation of differ-
ences was attempted by the French Ambassador, Du Croc, but in vain.f It was,
however, proposed to Mary to dismiss Bothwell as the only security remaining
to her, and upon a promise that should certainly have been better kept, J she was
* The Prince happened to be in the hands of one of the most honourable and best of men of
those miserable times, the Earl of Mar, who sternly refused to deliver him up to Bothwell, wben
after the marriage he was required so to do.
f Mad"e.de Keralio bas well described the difference visible in the army of the Queen at this time
and when she appeared in the field after her former marriage. " Femme de Henri Darnley, que
personne n'aimoit ni ne respectoit, mais dont 1'alliance n'etoit pas scandaleuse et deshonorante,
elle avoit vu grossir a chaque pas 1'armee qui poursuivoit le rebelle Murray. Mais lorsqu'elle
appeloit ses sujets au secours du Due d' Orkney, son Mari, ses sommations excitoifun sentiment
oppose" — " lorsque le nom odieux de Bothwell, Due d'Orkney, se faisoit entendre, toute la
nation, comme saisie d'horreur, se precipitoit en foule sousles drapeaux des rebelles."
I It is said, but not generally admitted, that she had no sooner been brought to Edinburgh, than
she bribed a soldier to convey a letter to Bothwell, promising never to forsake him ; and that this
letter being intercepted, was held, even by Grange of Kircaldy himself, who was inclined to act
honourably, to discharge the confederates from the promise they had conditionally made. In the
answer of Murray to Mary's complaint before the Commissioners at York, it is alleged, " that
when required to abandon the Earl, she would return no answer but rigorous menacing, on the one
part avowing to be revenged on all of them that had shewed themselves in that case, and on the
other part, offering to leave, and give over the realm and all, so she might be suffered to possess the
murderer of her husband." — Goodall, Appendix, No. xlviii. We do not pretend to vouch for the
truth of these allegations; such charges of deceit, falsehood, and forgery, hang suspended over
every transaction of this most unpleasant portion of history, that we scarcely know where to stop
with any degree of certainty; but of her resolution and persevering attachment to Bothwell, or,
•
430 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
-
induced to put herself into the hands of the Nobles, and Bothwell fled never more
to return. The unhappy Queen had a dismal proof given her of the false step she
had taken, in the indignation of the people on her return to Edinburgh. Scarcely
any thing can be more melancholy than the relation of this sad event, as it is to
be read in Robertson, Gilbert Stuart, Keralio, &c. ; but this was only the
beginning of sorrows.
Having lost herself so fatally in the esteem of her subjects, and degraded
herself in the eyes of foreign Potentates, as was notoriously the case* [see
Hume], it is probable, that the situation of the Prince, immediately suggested
the idea of a regency. In the hands of the Protestants, the immediate heir to
the crown might be bred up in the Reformed religion, and the Catholics, with
all their foreign confederates, disappointed of their hopes, of re-establishing
under Mary, in all its force, and all its abuses, the half fallen Romish faith.
Had not this great struggle been on foot, and this revolution of things in pro-
gress, the Queen might have been forgiven, and might have been entrusted,
perhaps, with the guardianship of her own child ; but this child was the child
of the nation also, and the choice of a guardian, in such critical moments, when
by the decision to be made, one party was almost sure to be sacrificed to the
feelings and prejudices of the other, became a matter of too great importance,!
at the least, of her determination not to give him up, Throckmorton's account to Elizabeth, seems
to deserve as much credit as any document in existence. His letters may be seen in Robertson,
dated from Edinburgh, July 18, 1567 — " She will by no means," says he, " yield to abandon
Bothivell for her husband, nor relinquish him; which matter will do her most harm of all, and
hardeneth these Lords to great severity with her." Mad"c. de Keralio disputes the authority of
this letter, but Throckmorton was not a man to be easily deceived. See besides, Lethington's
account in Laing's Dissertation, 100, 10), pronounced by Whi taker to be a forgery — but quaere?
Laing's conclusion on Alary 's guilt, from p. 106 to 150, seems to us to be unanswerable.
* " Le manage imprudent de cette Princesse," says Mad"e. de Keralio, " lui avoit aliene tous
les coeurs et repaudu sur elle une partie du tuepris dont on accabloit Bothwell avec tant de
justice." As Mad"e. de Keralio is one of those who think Mary was deceived and betrayed, even
to such a degree as to fancy Bothwell really innocent of Darnlcy's murder, we might ask, whether
this is not to charge her with such an imbecility of judgment and character, as might render her
unfit to rule a kingdom ? But our own opinion is different ; we think she was too wise to be
deceived, and but too much aware of Bothwell's guilt, to admit of such excuses being available.
We think also that she was highly qualified to fill a throne, as far as accomplishments could go ;
but that no person could be less qualified to rule Scotland well in the then state of Europe.
t It appears from Sir Henry Norris's memorandums before referred to, that at Paris, the
Cardinal of Bourbon, the Constable and Dandelot being with the King and Queen, "went about
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 431
to be reduced within the ordinary rules of such appointments.* Both well had
fled, but he might speedily be recalled, and the Queen, according to very credible
accounts, was far from being disposed to give him up ; she resisted all the pro-
posals made to her, to be formally divorced from him, and by so acting, plainly
discovered, to those who had ventured to suggest such a dissolution of the
marriage contract, the danger they would be in, if they suffered her to recover
again the full exercise of the supreme power. Under these circumstances she
became the prisoner of the party opposed to her. Fresh inquiries were set on
foot to discover the murderers of the late King, that the people might believe
they were seeking to do justice, when they were certainly only looking to their
own security, by finding some plausible pretence for removing the unhappy
Queen from the seat of government. It may be presumed, of course, that Mary
had fallen into the hands of the most powerful party as things then stood, so that
her friends did not dare openly oppose themselves, at that time, to the measures
pursuing against her. In what their power consisted remains to this day
a matter of great doubt. — See Robertson, i. 266.
In the mean while Elizabeth sent Throckmorton, of whom we have already
spoken, to remonstrate against the proceedings of the Confederates ;f they were
to win cunningly the Earl of Murray (being sent for to Scotland) to be of their faction, towards
their getting the Prince and his mother into their \mtion,"~ Howard's Letters, 331.
* There was a curious question started, according to Buchanan, before Mary's marriage with
Darnley, to this effect. " Whether the Queen, upon her husband's death, might not marry any
other man whom she pleased? — Some were of opinion, that a Queen might have the same free-
dom as people even of the commonalty have : others on the contrary affirmed, that the case was
different in reference to heirs of kingdoms, where, at one and the same time, an husband was to
be taken to a wife, and a King to be given to the people ; and that it was far more equitable that all
the people should provide an husband for one young Queen, than that one young Queen should
choose a King for all the people." — ii. 302.
f Three days only before Murray took upon him the Regency, Cecil wrote to Sir Henry Norris :
" You shall perceive by the Queen's Majesties letter to you, at this present, how earnestly she is
bent in favour of the Queen of Scots; and truly, since the beginning, she hath been greatly
offended with the Lords ; and howsoever her Majesty might make her profit by bearing with the
Lords in this action, yet no counsel can stay her Majesty from manifesting of her misliking of
them ; so as I think thereby, the French may and will easily catch them, and make their present
profit of them, to the damage of England. I think my Lord of Murray will take the office of
Regency, and will so band himself with the rest, as he will be out of peril at home." From this
letter we may see, how constantly damage to England was to be expected, if by any affront given
in Scotland, the French should be able to increase their party there. — See also the advice said to
be given to Throckmorton by Lethingtvn ; Camden, p. 96.
432 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
evidently of a nature not to please such a stickler for the royal prerogative as
Elizabeth was known to be. She must have seen and felt that they were sett'ng
a bad example to the subjects of all other states ;* when they would not listen
to her remonstrances, nor suffer Throckmorton to have access to Mary,f she is
said to have negotiated with the opposite party to rescue her from her prison,
but they were too disunited among themselves to be ready for such an under-
taking. In the meanwhile, threefy plans are said to have been brought under the
consideration of the Confederates, for the adjustment of this sad business. The
first, which is attributed to Maitland, was, after punishing the murderers of the
King, and dissolving the marriage with Bothwell, providing for the safety of the
young Prince, and the security of the Protestant religion, to re-establish the
Queen in the possession of her regal authority. — This was a mild and conciliatory
plan; but like all other plans of a similar nature, the securities proposed, presented
the greatest difficulty — -Who were the murderers to be punished ? how was the
marriage to be dissolved against the Queen's consent ? how was the young
Prince and the Protestant religion to be secured, against Mary's foreign and
domestic adherents, when once she should be restored to supreme power? It
should always be recollected, that we are speaking of revolutionary times ; there
was another struggle on foot, the issue of which might be greatly affected, by
the power committed to or withheld from Mary ; her situation was dreadful,
* It is so customary to question Elizabeth's sincerity in all her dealings with Mary, that few
will believe that she could at this time, at all wish in reality to help her ; and perhaps the truth
may be, that though she felt for the indignities to which she was exposed, on the part of her
own subjects, the political revolution was one more favourable to the English interests, than any
continuance of the former state of things could be. Murray so expressed) himself in a letter to
Cecil, in which he seems however under some alarm, as to the real opinion of both the Queen
and Cecil himself. The purport of the letter is to remove from the mind of Cecil a false impres-
sion he was reported to have conceived, of Murray's being offended, because the Secretary had
omitted to call him Regent in a letter addressed to him from the English court. The Regent
assures him of the contrary, and prays him not to let any such false reports interrupt their
intercourse, the amity of the two countries being the great abject of both. In this letter, he says of
the Queen, " although the Queen your mistress outwardly seem not altogether to allow the
present state here, yet doubt I not but her Highness in heart liketh it well enough ;" that is as
most likely to serve the interests of England, in conjunction with the Protestant party there, for
it is to that that he alludes.
f Hume gives Elizabeth credit for sincerity in resenting the affronts put upon Mary, at this
time, and for wishing to have her set at liberty; on conditions at least.
I Hume says/our. The difference between the historians is not great.
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 433
and truly pitiable, but we can only inquire into the circumstances through which
it came at last to be desperate. The second plan was, as violently ferocious and
severe, as the former was mild and moderate. It was to bring the Queen imme-
diately to trial, and to have her condemned and punished, as the principal
conspirator against the life of her husband, and the safety of her son. Though
there were many of the Laity of this opinion, yet it must not be denied, that the
Clergy, who had imbibed wrong notions of the principles of regal government,
in the school of Geneva, were very vociferous for the adoption of this second
plan. The third plan was, to procure the Queen to resign the crown to her son,
to have him proclaimed King, and Murray Regent.* We need scarcely say,
since it is already so generally known, that it was this third plan that was
adopted ; Mary was called upon to sign such an instrument, July 24, 1567, and
on the 29th, the royal infant was crownedf (at which ceremony Throckmorton
was forbidden to attend), and the Government thenceforth carried on in the name
of James VI. In this arrangement the Confederates took credit, for consulting
the public safety, without disparagement of the royal blood.
Though it is impossible not to feel for the ill-fated Mary, yet history assures
us, that the last expedient had many most respectable supporters.^ Murray's
talents for the administration of affairs had been tried and approved, and Mary
had evinced no small ingratitude in dismissing him from the high post he held
under her, in the way she had done. It is very customary with that class of
writers, who have received the peculiar denomination of the advocates of Mary,
to represent Murray as a monster of wickedness and deceit ;§ as of the most
* Herself (says Hume after Keith) to be banished either to France or England, with assurances
from the Sovereign in whose dominions she should reside, that she should make no attempts to
the disturbance of the established government.
•f Morton is said to have taken the coronation oath for the infant Sovereign ; in which, says
Hume, a promise to extirpate heresy was not forgotten — and so it might have been taken, without
much straining; for Popery wns become heresy in Scotland, at least to the confederate Lords; though
we do not wish to say this very seriously, or in any excuse of Morton's act of representation.
J Even the Earl of Bedford, a good man, as he is universally described to be, could write
thus of Mary at this time to the Earl of Shrewsbury. " The Queen is now content to hear
other give her good advice, which of late she could in no wise abide, and can herself also devise
and make such offers; that is to say, to renounce her title, and commit the government of the
Prince to the Lords, and she herself to go abroad into a foreign realm. These she thinketh to
be things plausible. July 22, 156?."— Lodge, i. 363.
| It is amusing sometimes to peruse the severe strictures of Catholic writers, on the conduct
both of Murray and Elizabeth, both bastards in their eyes, as it happened, as well as heretics.
VOL. II. 3 K
434 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
uncontrollable ambition, and constantly aiming at the crown, which he never
obtained, and which, perhaps, may be said to have been intercepted, for a long
time, only by the life of an infant, whom a hundred accidents might have
destroyed, but who was preserved through all the vicissitudes of one of the
most eventful periods of all history ; a period too, marked by some of the most
atrocious removals of obnoxious persons ever known. We do not mean to say
that Murray was no party to the sad events which accelerated Mary's ruin, but
we are disposed to think, that he had not influence enough to keep her in the
right path, by detaching her from Bothwell ; and seeing that the nation was
going fast to ruin, through her indiscretions, he kept himself prepared to take
the administration again upon him, when called upon so to do, in any emer-
gency that might arise. [Compare Laing's remarks on Paris's confession,
vol. ii. 33, 34.] On August the 22d, he may be said to have entered on his
high office of Regent.*
The following passage is from Conceits, of whose little book we have already said so much.
" Sublata e vivis MARIA Catherine filia, ELISABETHA ex adulterino et infando Henrici cum
Anna Bolena concubitu procreata, regnum illud invasit, quse quod nullum & Catholicis prin-
cipibus justitise quippe studiosis ad impietatem suam excusandam speravit auxiliutu, ad hsereti-
corum paries, quos pronos ad omne nefas sciebat, transicns, crudelius longe Angliam quam
Nothus, cui regia potestas deerat, Scotiam percussit. Quam nefanda (bone Deus) Principes
extra legitimam thorum procreant monstra, quorum eo periculosior est libido, quo potentior; et
certe utmultarum gentium testantur annales, spuria et Nothus duas prsestantissimas S. Romanae
ecclesiae provincias acerbius vastarunt, quam si universa barbarorum eluvies eas iiiundasset."
With more to the same effect ; which, with many similar passages in the copy from which we
have transcribed the above [date J624], seems to have given such offence to some zealous
Protestant, as to be scored through with marks of high indignation.
* Hume and Robertson have asserted, that Murray, before he took upon him the Regency,
had an interview with Mary at Lochleven, where he sharply upbraided her for her conduct,
and by the ill-timed severity of his reproaches, threw her into the utmost distress and despair.
Dr. Stuart, on the contrary, by reference to a letter of Throckmorton's, not noticed by either
of the above authors, though they must have known of it, describes the scene to have been
totally different, not however with any more advantage to the character of Murray ; for, as is
usual, the more kind he was, the more is he accused of deceit and treachery. Hume and
Robertson thought to defend him by their strictures, by referring his severity to the austerity of
his religious principles ; while those who consider him to have been constantly Mary's bitterest
enemy will have it, that having, by kindness and pretended affection, obtained her confidence, in
the acknowledgment of some of the errors and false steps of her past life, he alarmed her so,
with regard to her personal safety, as to induce her to request him to take the Regency, to pre-
serve her from an ignominious death, though at the expense of her crown and liberty. The
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 435
The fate of Bothwell is remarkable ; after various attempts to continue in
Scotland until things should become more settled, he took to the sea, became
a sort of pirate, until being captured by a Norwegian vessel, he was conveyed to
Norway, where, after being, by the extremity of his sufferings and disappoint-
ments, deprived of reason, he terminated his wretched life.*
The Regent soon obtained sufficient credit and authority to carry on the
government, in the name of James, with much peace and tranquillity, owing to
the disunion of those who might be called the Queen's friends. Robertson is
curious circumstance is, that perhaps her life was really saved by this arrangement, so inveterate
were the prejudices against her, both among the Laity and Clergy, after her marriage with
Bothwell ; so that the best of the two stories, if rightly interpreted, seems to have had most
truth in it.
* To this short account we cannot omit to add, that after the business at Carberry Hill, or
even after the removal of Mary to Lochleven, he might have been taken, had the Lords in
confederacy against him chosen it ; but when they found that he afterwards lingered about the
Orkneys, and would not quit the kingdom, they sent Grange and Tullibardine after him, with a
commission, if they found him, to try him on the spot, and have him executed, if they judged
him guilty. This certainly must be allowed to intimate a great dread of the secrets he might
disclose, if brought back to Edinburgh, against some of those, particularly, who had before
acquitted him, and of whose connivance to a certain extent there can be little doubt. Anderson,
Hume, and Robertson, have been charged with a wilful omission of this extraordinary com-
mission; we are therefore the more inclined to mention it, having no desire to screen any of the
parties from their share in the horrible transactions that took place ; nor would we deny that
Mary was in the hands of persons, many of them so unprincipled, as to have contributed largely
to her fall. But she knew who these unprincipled persons were, and should have been on her
guard against deceit, instead of affording them more opportuuities of betraying her than need to
have been the case. Murray, we apprehend, had lost all confidence in her, and all power of
preventing her fall ; and foreseeing that he might, in some degree, retrieve matters if she should
fall, particularly in regard to the church, and the fatal effects of foreign influence, he left things
at last to take their course, upon the principle, " Qui •cult decipi, decipiatur ;" if we put qwe,
perhaps it would express the exact truth. We do not think Murray was the author of the plot,
or train of plots, which led to the catastrophe of Mary's abdication of the crown. Scotland
had gone on well under both, while Murray was the Queen's Minister ; but as soon as he was
discarded, and treated as a rebel, Mary fell into all kinds of troubles and difficulties, sinking
deeper and deeper as Bothwell's influence increased, until her reputed friends almost every where
forsook her, for she fell for a time as much into disgrace abroad as at home. Her advocates
dwell continually on Murray's retirement from the scene at critical moments, as though he had
laid the train, and left it to others to manage the explosion. We conceive that he absented himself
at times when, his power being gone, he could do no good in warding off the catastrophe;
keeping within call, nevertheless, to further the views of those who sided with him upon the two
great points, of the Reformation, and exclusion of the French, as opportunities should arise.
436 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
inclined to think that Elizabeth would have assisted the latter, had they shewn
any firmness in the support of their Sovereign ; but there was so little vigour
and harmony in their councils (to adopt his words), that she was entirely
discouraged from espousing their cause.*
The consent of the Parliament was still wanting to give credit and authority
to the Regent's government ; hitherto things had proceeded so much in his
favour, that he thought himself secure enough to venture to call together the
National Assembly of the three Estates. And in truth, every thing was granted
that the confederates could demand ; Mary's resignation was received and
registered; the young King's authority, and Murray's appointment to the
Regency, confirmed and acknowledged ; and all the statutes in favour of the
Protestants passed in 1560, publicly ratified. It was in the month of December
that this Parliament met, and it was soon dissolved ; nothing seems to have
been settled concerning the person of the Queen. It is conjectured, that the
confederates had contemplated perpetual imprisonment, in room of the formal
trial, condemnation and sentence to which some would have subjected her.
We must now return to the domestic and foreign occurrences of the year
1567 ; the affairs of Scotland, for this year, being terminated.
While Mary was ruining herself by imprudent marriages, Elizabeth appears
to have been amusing herself by the entertainment and encouragement of suits
which she probably never meant to accept. Her Parliament had pressed her
closely upon the subject of marriage, or in the alternative of not marryintr, to
declare her heir. To rid herself of the latter difficulty, she seems to have
entered much further than she ought to have done into negotiations with foreign
Princes, to the embarrassment of her Ministers and little credit to herself.
In the course of the present year (1567), the treaty of marriage with the
Archduke Charles of Austria, was renewed, | with greater prospects of a favour-
* The Duke of Chatelherault was expected from France two months after Murray had become
Regent. Cecil, writing to Sir Henry Norris, October 2, 1567, says, " The Duke of Chatelherault
is at Dieppe, and nreaneth within these ten clays to be here, as his servants report. I think he
shall not be able to annoy the Lovth (probably Murray), as he and his, I see, do desire."
Which latter passage, I find thus rendered by Mad"e. de Keralio. " Je pcnse quil ne sera pas
capable d'inlimider le puissant, comme je /e desire." The difference between the original and the
translation is considerable, as the reader will perceive; and we cannot forbear adding this one
remark, that though this Lady seems to have been a diligent and extensive examiner of our public
documents, her translations of English papers are not always to be trusted.
f " There is great reason to believe," says Lodge in his Illustrations of History, " that Elizabeth
passionately desired to marry this accomplished Prince." If this were really the case, one would
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 437
able conclusion than had ever before perhaps been entertained. Count Stolberg
came into England, on the part of the Emperor Maximilian, while the Earl of
Sussex was dispatched to Germany ; a wise and good man,* and so much bent
upon turning the Queen aside from any design of marrying Leicester, with
whom he stood upon no good terms, as to be very sincerely in earnest in his
endeavours to bring about the match with the Archduke. Camden relates, that
Sussex carried with him an associate equally bent upon preventing the match ;
the Lord North, suborned by Leicester to thwart all the purposes of Sussex ;
while, at home, the Earl himself is stated to have remonstrated in strong terms
with the Queen, against any foreign marriage. f The sum of his remonstrances
may be seen in Camden ; who has also given a very fair statement of the
difficulties and impediments, started on the score of religion. Seven years had
been already consumed, in the entertainment of this marriage treaty, but no
think Lord Sussex's letter to her from Vienna, Oct. 18th, 1567, would have been likely to have
determined her, his commendations of the Prince are abundant, whether regarding his person, his
mind, or his character among those with whom he lived. " I find," says he, " his whole shape
to be good, worthy commendation and likting in all respects, and such as is rarely to be
found in such a Prince. His Highness, besides his natural language of Dutch, speaketh very
well Spanish and Italian, and as I hear Latin. His dealings with me be very wise ; his conver-
sation such, as much contenteth me ; he is greatly beloved here of all men ; and truly we cannot
be so glad there to have him come to us, as they will be sad here to have him go from them,
as he is accounted wise, liberal, valiant and of great courage ; and (which I most weigh) univer-
sally noted to be of such virtue, as he was never spotted or touched with any notable vice or
crime." The whole letter is worth reading. — Lodge, i. 365.
* " Wise and loyal as Burghley," says Lodge, " without his blind attachment to the monarch :
vigilant as Walsingham, but disdaining his low cunning; magnificent as Leicester, but incapable
of hypocrisy ; and brave as Raleigh, with the piety of a primitive Christian." — Lodges Illustrations,
\. 367. where may be seen a long account of this amiable Nobleman; the very man, on whom Lord
Burghley seems to have relied, for some wholesome checks upon the ambition and pride of
Leicester.
f Lord Sussex seems plainly to allude to this, in one of his letters. " Although the burden
the Queen's Majesty layeth now upon me, be greater than I may well bear, yet if I were assured
my doings would be well backed there, I durst be the bolder to venture upon my credit here, but
when I remember who work in this vineyard ; I can hardly hope of a good wine year ; and they see
the more I go on credit, the greater is my loss." — Camden relates, that Sussex having nothing
more frequent in his mouth, than that a foreign Prince was to be preferred before the noblest
Englishman, whether a man respect honour, power, or wealth ; one, who was of a contrary mind,
said merrily in his presence, " when these three, honour, power, and riches are respected in marriage,
the devil and the world are the match-makers and brokers."
438 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
progress made in the adjustment of the differences upon the point of religion,
and the liberty to be granted to the Archduke, of publicly professing the
Romish faith, and openly using the services of that church ; or if this might
not be granted, of doing so more privately. The Queen, who seemed always to
reserve this point as a plea for breaking off any foreign match she chose not to
accept, declined proceeding further, unless the Archduke would repair to Eng-
land, that she might see him and confer with him personally ; but his patience
seems to have been exhausted, the treaty was finally broken off this year, and
the Archduke soon after married Mary the daughter of Albert fifth Duke of
Bavaria.
As the time appeared to be come for the restitution of Calais, according to
the terms of the treaty of Gateau, Sir Thomas Smith was commissioned to
make the demand ;* a demand which the French were, probably, quite as
much prepared constantly to evade, as Elizabeth was to escape from the tram-
mels of marriage. A regular 'negotiation, however, was entered into between
Sir Thomas Smith, on the English part, and the celebrated Chancellor de
1'Hospital, on the part of the French. It certainly required all the abilities of
this great man to justify the retention of it, in the face of the treaty of Cateau;
but, in truth, what he alleged did not amount to any thing like a justification —
it was altogether evasive ;f and had not the policy of Elizabeth led her to be
more attentive to the defence of her kingdom from foreign attacks, than to
provoke hostilities by the invasion of neighbouring countries, there can be little
doubt but that her high spirit would have resented the paltry shufflings of the
French Court upon this occasion. The Chancellor was ably answered, before
the French Council, by Sir Thomas Smith, but without effect.
In the course of this year great disturbances happened in Ireland, through
the restless ambition of the famous Shan O'Niel, of whom we have spoken
before. It is not necessary to enter into the particulars of this rebellion, as
they may be easily read in Camden, and other historians ;J the extraordinary
* The demand was made, first, at the gates of the town, next the sea, in a loud voice, in
French, by the sound of a trumpet, and before certain witnesses, as certified by a public notary;
afterwards it was demanded of the King.
t See Camden, Rapin, &c.
I At this time Ireland was under the government (as Lord Deputy) of the celebrated
Sir Henry Sydney, father to Sir Philip Sydney. The Queen could not have a better or more
faithful servant. He was nearly related to the Brandon family. King Henry had been his
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
manners of the Irish Chieftains, their desultory mode of warfare, the strange
names by which they were distinguished, entirely superseding their titles, cause
the accounts of their movements to resemble more the fictions of romance than
true history. In the struggle of this year, however, Shan lost his life. " He
was a man," says Camden, " most polluted with murthers and adulteries, a very
great rioter and glutton, and such a drunkard, that to cool his body, when it
was immoderately inflamed with wine and usquebagh, he would many times
be burited in the earth, up to the chin."
In regard to the Continent in general this year, nothing perhaps can be more
extraordinary than the information communicated to the Secretary by some of
the Queen's foreign Intelligencers (as they were called), of the following con-
federacy of the chiefest Popish States. It was sent to Cecil, written in the
Dutch (or German), as the abstract of a secret contract or league made between
the Pope, the Emperor, the King of Spain, the King of Portugal, the Duke of
Bavier (Bavaria), the Duke of Savoy, and others, anno 1567. The French
King is also stated to have been induced to signify his assent. We can only
insert such articles as seem to have a bearing upon the policy of England ;
omittingv in particular, the several royal marriages to be negotiated among the
Confederates, to strengthen the Catholic interests.
"Art 1. AH Lutherans, or Calvinists, or Hugonots, which be against the
Church of Rome, shall be rooted out ; and in the place of those Potentates
others shall be placed at their pleasures.
" Art. 5. The goods of the disobedient Lords and Potentates, which will not
consent to be comprehended in the contract, shall be confiscated and seized
upon by the said Confederates.
" Art. 7. All well-willers and assisters of the churchmen of Luther and
Calvin, shall be displaced, banished, and condemned to death.
" Art. 11. Every man shall be commanded and holden to go to mass, and
godfather, and he had lived with Edward VI. upon terms of singular intimacy and familiarity,
which threw him much into the society of Sir John Cheke and Sir William Cecil, with whom he
contracted so cordial a friendship, as, in the case of the latter, not only continued to the end of
his life, but was of much benefit to him. He married a daughter of Dudley, Duke of Northum-
berland, Leicester's sister. His government in Ireland was always popular, and at this time
particularly so, as may be seen by a letter from Waterford, March 8, 1567, addressed to the
Secretary, expressing the great concern and apprehension the people then felt, in consequence of
a rumour afloat of his removal. — See Haynes, 463.
440 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
that on pain of excommunication, correction of the body, or death ; or, at the
least, loss of goods.
" Art. 12. Calais, and other places lately belonging to the crown of Eng-
land, shall be delivered to the King of Spain ; and he shall help and assist the
Queen of Scotland, and restore her to her kingdom, in chasing away the Queen
of England ; and help to destroy all such as be affectioned, or make claim to
the same kingdom."
The articles, in all, amount to twenty-eight, but the above are most to our
purpose. It is stated, in conclusion, that it was chiefly the contrivance of the
Cardinals of Lorrain and Granvelle, which may very well be believed.
The Secretary seems constantly to have had his eye as much upon the
Church as the State, being indeed unable to withdraw himself from the concerns
of either of them, from the multifarious letters and applications he was in the
way of receiving, not as Prime Minister,* a character unknown in the time of
Elizabeth, nor yet merely as Secretary of State, but as, it appears to us, the
wisest, the most attentive, and most moderate counsellor about the court ; one
often thwarted, often opposed in his opinions to some of the greatest of the
Queen's favourites, often to the Queen herself; but yet whose consummate judg-
ment, prudence, and discretion, were so well known to, and so justly appreciated
by Elizabeth, that those who had any doubtful points to carry, or any complaints
or suits to prefer, appear to have thought that they could approach the royal ear
better through Cecil, than by any direct communications. Thus we find Peers
of the realm, Archbishops and Bishops, even foreign Princes and foreign
Ministers, applying to him upon almost all public occasions, as by far the safest,
though not the only channel of communication with her Majesty.f Even
Leicester appears to have assumed the appearance, wherever he could, of being
upon the best terms with him, and so united with him in certain services of
state, as often to have his name associated with that of Cecil, in dispatches and
other addresses to the Court.
In the course of this year an attack seems to have been made upon the clergy,
* Wiquefort, in his work, sur I'^mbassaileur ct scs functions, after observing that Wakingham
addressed his letters chiefly to Lord Leicester, observes, that after Lord Burghley became Treasurer,
he addressed him also, " bien qn'il n'eust pas la qualite de Premier Ministre et qu'il ne fust pas
en effet, sous une Heine, qui gouiernoit, et qui ne se laissoit point gomerner." — Tome ii. 217.
\ Cecil seems in this instance to have resembled his great contemporary Sully, who was to all
jiersons the channel of communication with his royal master, Henry IV,
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD -'BURGH LEY. 441
by representations to the Queen herself, of an abuse of their revenues and pos-
sessions, by long leases and other measures, tending to their own individual
advantage; but it seemed to Cecil to be the work of an enemy, and only designed
to bring the clergy into disgrace with the Queen, that they might be turned out
of their stewardships, and their lands and possessions given as a prey to the
complainants. They had proceeded so far as nearly to have persuaded the Queen
to appoint a commission of inquiry, when Cecil interposed to prevent it, or, at
least, delay it as long as he could, that the clergy might not be harassed.
" I am much troubled," he wroteto theArchbishop, " with the Queen's Majesty's
earnestness to have certain commissioners in the whole realm, to inquire of the
wastes of the clergy, for she is much thereto enticed. I do what I can to delay
the execution, fearing that thereby the clergy shall receive great blemish in
opinion, and so I mean to defer it if I can." The clergy, indeed, at this time
were very narrowly watched, especially by informers, in order, if possible, to levy
contributions upon them, for the slightest breach of the penal laws; and they
were dreadfully fleeced besides by the intrusion of laymen into the prebends and
benefices, which the Archbishop did his utmost to remedy, but not without
incurring much obloquy from persons who should have known better.
In the same letter the Secretary thanks the Archbishop for some support he had
given him in endeavouring to allay certain divisions at Cambridge, which had
been complained of to him as Chancellor. They had fallen into great disputes
there, it would seem, upon the passage in the Creed, relating to our Saviours
descent into Hell. It was judged that the article had been so framed as to leave
room for different opinions, asserting only the bare fact, without fixing the
mode: so that such disputes being unprofitable,* were in the Chancellor's
opinion to be restrained, and put an end to as soon as possible.
As another proof of the great variety of things to which the Secretary's
attention was drawn, ecclesiastical as well as civil, we feel called upon to notice
a controversy very warmly carried on this year by Dean ISowell, against one
Dorman, a Papist, sometime a Fellow of New College, Oxford, who, in 1564,
had published a book called the Proof • professedly written against Jewel, and
designed to prove the necessity of owe head of the Church, who must be, of course,
the Pope. This book Dean Nowell undertook to answer, in a treatise, called,
* He calls it, in his letter, " the unprofitable, rash controversy, newly raised upon the Article
of the Descent of Christ into Hell."
VOL. II. 3 L
442 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
according to the singular quibbling style of those times, a Reproof of Mr.
Dprmans Proof; which Dorman answered again, calling his defence, a Disproof
of Nowell' s Reproof, and this came out in the year 1565 ; but in the present year
1567, Nowell made a pretty sharp reply to the Disproof, accusing the author of
the grossest plagiarism, and of a very unfair and unmannerly style of writing.
We need not go into the particulars of this controversy, as Strype has written so
largely upon it in his Annals ;* but we must observe, as a curious circumstance,
that amidst all his arduous business and occupations as Secretary of State, Cecil
found time not only to peruse, but to correct and make additions to the several
sheets as they passed through the press. In certain doubts, indeed, upon the
subject, we are told that he was particularly consulted, and especially in respect
to that part of Nowell's answers which regarded Calvin, who was judged to have
written very erroneously against Henry VIII., and the title of Supreme Head ; a
subject certainly not unbefitting the notice of Cecil, whose political life we have,
in our first volume, shewn to have commenced with a discussion of this very
point. Nowell wrote to the Secretary to say, that " he should be bound much to
his honour, in case he would (his leisure so serving him) oversee that part ; that
the printer called upon him, and that he had no cause to stay, but the lack of
intelligence of his honour's judgment of that part."
About the same time Jewel also was solicitous to publish his answer to
Harding, but would not attempt it without the Secretary's advice ; u since he
best, knew the inclinations of her Majesty's mind," as he expressed himself in a
letter dated Sept. 27, 1567. The Secretary it seems procured the Queen her-
self to read it, who gave the Bishop thanks for it, encouraging1 him to put it
forth without delay.
In Lancashire this year, there was a great attempt on foot to restore Popery.
Mass was very commonly said throughout the county ; priests harboured ; the
Book of Common Prayer discarded, with the services fixed and established by
law ; many churches shut up, and those that were kept open, chiefly supplied
by ejected monks and Popish priests. A pretty strong letter upon the subject
was sent from the Queen to the Bishop of Chester, in reproof of his negligence
and inattention, and tlie letter was not without effect.
Another northern Bishop, occasioned some trouble at the Court this year, but
in quite a different way. This was the Bishop of Carlisle, who with his
* See also his Life of Archbishop Parker, Life of Grinclal, &c.
1567.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 443
Chapter, had many complaints to make, of the damage they were sustaining,
from the unreasonable leases granted by the former Bishop and Popish pre-
bendaries. One of the prebendaries, Scot, came up on purpose to see the
Secretary upon the subject, " who," as Strype says, " was always ready to help
the state of the church and religion." The Bishop wrote earnestly to Cecil, by
Scot, and Sir Thomas Smith, who held the Deanery at this time, added a letter
from himself, praying the Secretary to peruse the paper that Scot brought, and
as he thought good, to correct and amend it, and get it signed by his own and
the Lords' hands.
We have spoken before of the tricks of Popery, to interrupt or confound, if
possible, the progress of the Reformation. And of the indulgences, dispensations,
&c. granted by the Pope, to any, who, under an assumed disguise, should mingle
with the Protestants,- and endeavour to convert them, or to throw them into
confusion, or to learn their secrets. In the course of this year, a notorious
spy and impostor of this description was happily detected. The man's name
was Faithful Cummin, a Dominican friar,* who at Maidstone in the county of
Kent gathered together a congregation, and began to preach extemporaneously,
groaning and weeping much, in imitation of some of the Reformed ministers.
Several circumstances appearing suspicious in his conduct and manner, he was
brought before the Archbishop, who examined him : he acknowledged that he
had been ordained by Cardinal Pole, but had fallen off from Rome and become
a preacher of the Gospel ; but being pressed upon the subject of a license, he
confessed that he had none from any of the Reformed Bishops, but referred to
his sermons, which were generally against the Pope and Church of Rome.
The fact seems to be, that this Dominican friar, being upon the watch for
all opportunities of defaming the Church of England, and fomenting whatever
differences he should find subsisting amongst Protestants, had assumed the garb
and character of a precisian or puritan ; and as some of them had raised
objections against King Edward's Prayer-book, and much encouraged extem-
poraneous prayer and preaching, as proofs of the effusion of the Spirit, he stole
into the pulpits wherever he could, at the end of the prayers, and by inveighing
against the Pope, and not joining in the public prayers, he passed for a good
Gospel minister, but averse from the use of the established Liturgy ; thereby
evidently doing all he could to exasperate the feelings of the puritanical party
against the church.
* Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker, i. 484, 5.— See also Heath's case.— Collier, ii. 518.
444 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1567.
Sir William Cecil saw plainly into all this, as may appear from one of his
memorandums. " In these days," [anno 1567] " men began to speak against
the reformed prayers, established first by King Edward VI. and his Parliament,
and since by her Majesty and her Parliament ; upon which account, divers
Papists disguisedly spoke as bitterly against the reformed prayers of the
church, as those they called Puritans did." — Cummin underwent an examina-
tion in the very presence of the Queen, who is said to have been convinced of
his craft by the evasive answers he gave. Finding that his designs were in the
way to be detected, after taking an opportunity of recommending spiritual
prayers, and insidiously pronouncing the established Liturgy to be but the
Mass-book translated, he collected some money at the hands of his congrega-
tion, and escaped beyond sea ; and, finally, coming to Rome, so well explained
to the Pope all his devices for breeding confusion among the reformed in
England, as to obtain from his Holiness a reward of 2000 ducats.
The kingdom was this year deprived of the services of a very able man, and
one of whom, in all probability, the Secretary had a very high opinion, having
been his colleague in negotiating the celebrated Treaty of Edinburgh, 1560;
and having received from him, when abroad, most important information on
the general state of Europe, and secret designs of the several Courts there,
particularly the French. This was the celebrated Dr. Nicholas Wotton, Dean
of Canterbury and York. He was the fourth son of Sir Robert Wotton, of
Boughton Malherb, in Kent, bred up a civilian, and very early employed by
Henry VIII. on a mission to Vienna; on which occasion he displayed such
abilities, as to fix him, in the diplomatic line, as perhaps one of the ablest
negotiators ever known. He was sent ambassador twice to Charles V. ; once
to Philip of Spain; once to Francis I. ; thrice to his son, Henry II. ; once to
Mary, Queen of Hungary, Governess of the Low Countries; and twice to
William, Duke of Cleves. On the accession of Elizabeth he is said to have
refused the Primacy. He was about seventy years of age at the time of his
death.* His body was deposited near the tomb of Edward the Black Prince,
in Canterbury cathedral.
In that entertaining work, the " Progresses of Queen Elizabeth," by Nichols,
it is observed, that the progresses of 1567, and the three following years, are
scarcely noticed, except in the entries preserved in the Diary of Lord Burghley.
The following are what occur for the year 1567.
* Strype's Annals, i. ch. 50. Camden, and Lodge's Illustrations, vol. i. 336.
I667-l MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 445
" Aug. — , the Queen's Majesty at Windsor.
18, at Oatlands.
21, atGuildford.
25, at Farnham.
Sept. 9, at Windsor."
In a letter from Sir William to Lord Cobham, May 27, 1567, printed by
Haynes, the Secretary seems to intimate that the Queen, was to sup with him
privately on the evening ensuing. " My Lady Clinton hath underhand pro-
cured my wiff to make a supper to-morrow, where she sayth a greater person
will be covertly, as she is wont. I meane not to take knolledg, but shall be
glad to see hir content with my poverty."
CHAP. IX.
1568.
Tenth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign commenced November 17, 1567.
Various opinions as to what should be done with Mary— Knox— Different religious parties
—Mary's escape from Lochleven — Conflict on Langside Hill— Mary Jiies to Dundrenan
Abbey — Goes to Carlisle — Story of the ring— Of the difficult part Elizabeth hadlo
act with regard to Mary — Of Mary's character — Difficulty of deciding what was best
to be done with her— Elizabeth's conduct rash/y judged by different authors — Lady Jane
Grey — Comparison between Elizabeth and her sister Mary — Anne Boleyn — Sonnets, fyc.
produced at York— Murray's charges against Mary— Mary's letter to Elizabeth — Deter-
mination of Elizabeth and her Ministers to keep Mary in England — Sir Henry Norm's
letter to Cecil — Letter from Mary to Elizabeth, from Bolton — Extract from the instruc-
tions of the Prince of Conde— Of Elizabeth and her Ministers, with regard to Mary—
Of Elizabeth and Mary — Sir Ralph Sadler's speech— Of Elizabeth and her Counsellors,
especially Lord Burghley — Commissioners meet at York — Queries sent to the Duke of
Norfolk — Of the claim of England to a feudal superiority over Scotland — Queries
favourable to Mary, suggested by the Council at Hampton Court — Sir Francis Knollys'
letter to Elizabeth—Of Mary's situation — Letter from Lord Scrape and Sir F. Knollys
concerning her — Of the Papists, in Lancashire especially — See of York vacant — Letter
addressed by the Queen's order to Cecil, as Chancellor of Cambridge — Dr. Feme's letter
— Queens illness — Sir John Mason's prayer — Of Mary's case — The Protestants of foreign
countries seek the protection of Elizabeth — Many allowed to settle in England — The Pope's
bull — Answered by Bishop Jewel— Affairs of the Netherlands — Count of Egmont —
Anabaptists — Bishop Grindal — Cecil's Fast — Outrages committed by the Spaniards on
the English Merchants' fleet — Paper presented to the Spanish Ambassador — OH Fasting .
and Fish days — Letter from Cecil to the University of Cambridge on Fasting — Queen's
Progresses,
WE are now entering upon a year, the most memorable perhaps in the annals
of England and Scotland, as the beginning of Mary's long imprisonment, termi-
nating in an ignominious death, and from the reproach of which, the character
of Elizabeth can never now be quite cleared ; nor yet as it would seem, that of
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 447
her great but not only Minister. We are not willing to impute blame to those
who have written upon the subject, with a partial leaning towards Mary, because,
as the story is not only commonly told, but generally considered, it is impossible
not to feel a considerable bias that way — and for the credit of England, we
might surely well wish nothing of the kind had happened. But to take a
perfectly just view of the conduct of Princes and Statesmen, we must not look
only to the bare result and consequences of things, but to every stage of the
proceedings leading to such results and consequences. And we must not sup-
pose that such results were determined upon, whether events should naturally
lead to them or not, but we should endeavour to find out, by the closest investi-
gation possible, how they came to pass.
We left Mary in her doleful prison of Lochleven, degraded in the eyes of
many of her subjects, to so low a degree, as to render it quite doubtful what
shbuld be done with her. We have said that some looked to a perpetual impri-
sonment ; some to a public trial for being accessary to the murder of Darnley ;
and it must not, for it cannot be denied, that Knox was among those who called
loudly for the latter proceeding, being led thereto no doubt, by certain prin-
ciples of severity, drawn from a school little friendly to royalty, and quite
uncompromising on points of strict morality, against which the unhappy Queen
was almost universally supposed to have offended largely.
This is not the place to weigh and examine the exact source and original, the
justice and propriety of such principles ; it is enough to know that they were in
very considerable force and operation in Scotland, when the facts that we have
related occurred. We may however observe, that the severity of them was
probably the greater, from their being taken up, not only in opposition to the
Church of Rome, but in places where the corruptions and abuses of that Church
had been most notoriously visible. We have shewn in our first volume, how
exceedingly gross and corrupt the religion of Scotland was, at the period of the
beginning of the Lutheran Reformation, and it may well be thought, from its
nearer neighbourhood to Rome, and its connexion with countries that had
first felt the weight of Popish Inquisitions, that Geneva was not a situation
where very moderate feelings would prevail, in its separation from a persecuting
and tyrannical Church. It is well known, how much the peace of the Protestant
Church, for a long time was disturbed by the collision of the Lutheran and
Calvinistic parties ; or, as they are often distinguished, the German and Helve-
tian Reformers. The characteristic of the latter being notoriously, an uncom-
448 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
promising rigour and severity, on points where the former thought a greater
laxity might be manifested, without offence to the Gospel.
Mary however had certainly fallen in a great degree into such hands as we
have been describing, before the opportunity occurred of her passing into
England. Her own sex, according to Throckmorton, expressed even greater
indignation against her than the men ; " The women," says he, " be most furious
and impudent against the Queen, and yet the men be mad enough."
It was, as we have seen, in the month of June, 1 567, that Mary first entered
the prison walls of the castle of Lochleven. There she continued nearly a year,
without any visible prospect of relief; even Ambassadors, as we have observed,
could not obtain leave to confer with her, and the mother of Murray had her in
custody. But there was one, nevertheless, not far from her, who having the
heart to serve her, found out the means, though with no ultimate success, as to
her relief from bondage. This was George Douglas, her keeper's brother, a
youth of eighteen. The story is so well known, from writings of romance as
well as from genuine history, that we should think it useless to enter into the
particulars, but that the incident as related by Robertson, principally after Keith,
is too interesting to be quite passed over. " Mary," he tells us, " employed all
her art to gain George Douglas, a youth of eighteen. As her manners were
naturally affable and insinuating, she treated him with the most flattering
distinction ; she even allowed him to entertain the most ambitious hopes, by
letting fall some expressions, as if she would choose him for her husband.* At
his age, and in such circumstances, it was impossible to resist such a temptation.
He yielded and drew others info the plot. On Sunday the 2d of May,")" while
his brother sat at supper, and the rest of the family were retired to their devo-
tions, one of his accomplices found means to steal the keys out of his brother's
chamber, and opening the gates to the Queen and one of her maids, locked them
behind her, and then threw the keys into the lake. Mary ran with precipitation
to the boat which was prepared for her, and on reaching the shore was received
with the utmost joy, by Douglas, Lord Seaton, and Sir James Hamilton, who
with a few attendants, waited for her ; she instantly mounted on horseback,
and rode full speed towards Niddrie, Lord Seaton's seat, in West Lothian. She
* Hume says, she went so far as to give him hopes of espousing him, after her marriage with
Bothwell should be dissolved on the plea of force ; and that she proposed this expedient to the
Regent who rejected it.
i Mary seems to have written by stealth to Elizabeth on the 1st of May. See Hai/nes, 464.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 449
arrived there that night without being pursued or interrupted. After halting
three hours, she set out for Hamilton ; and travelling at the same pace, she
reached it next morning.
At Hamilton, an association of many Lords, Bishops, and Gentlemen of dis-
tinction, was soon formed to defend her person and authority ; inconsistently
enough, however, by some who had before signed the counter-association for
the support and defence of the King's government; which may serve to shew
how very little reliance was to be placed in any confederacy subject to such
sudden changes. Murray was in doubt as to the steadiness qf many of his
adherents, and some indeed did revolt; happening to be at Glasgow at the
time, he did not attempt to retire, as some would have persuaded him, but
pretended to listen to overtures made by the Queen, till he could get his forces
together. Murray's coolness gained him every advantage over his opponents,
who were in all instances too confident and impetuous. Hamilton, Archbishop
of St. Andrew's, looked to great advantages to himself and family, by having
the person of the Queen in his hands, and hoped soon entirely to crush Murray,
the ancient enemy of his house. In an imprudent attempt to convey the Queen
to the Castle of Dumbarton, they were interrupted by Murray and his party,
who had taken their post on an eminence called Lang-side hill ; and the Queen
encouraging her generals to give battle, a conflict ensued, so much, and so
evidently, to the disadvantage of the latter, through the haste in which they
had rushed forward to the engagement, that the Queen, beholding it from a
neighbouring hill, entirely lost her courage, and quitting the place in the
utmost alarm, never rested till she had reached the Abbey of Dundrenan in
Galloway, sixty Scots' miles from the spot where the engagement had taken
place. Here it was that she came to the fatal resolution of retiring to England,
a resolution indeed not more fatal to her own happiness, than to the credit and
reputation of England and her great Queen. For the slur cast upon the latter
by all who look only to the moral bearings of the case, will never, we fear, be
effectually done away. Those who would endeavour to account for what
followed, by a reference to the political situation of the two parties, and the
danger in which both Queens stood, from any preponderance of the balance on
either side, must be reluctant to proceed, at the hazard of being thought capable
of feeling less, than every sensible mind, in these days, must feel for the pro-
tracted sufferings and violent death of the unfortunate Queen of Scots. The
subject is forced upon ourselves, by the circumstances in which Lord Burghley
VOL. II. 3 M
450 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
was inevitably placed, as one of the Queen's Council during the whole time,
so as scarcely to bear less blame than herself, for the harsh measures adopted.
It cannot be denied, that Princes and Statesmen, may, by circumstances, be
compelled to act upon information and intelligence, never perhaps generally
known or understood ; and, through this ignorance on the part of the public
at large, may seem to act with the most wanton cruelty, when in fact something
scarcely less than absolute necessity, and not cruelty, may have . been the real
motive.
Mary had quitted Lochleven on Sunday the 2d of May, 1568, arrived at
Hamilton the next morning; on the 8th, the association in her favour appears
to have been fully formed and completed ; on the 13th the two armies came into
contact, and fought the battle of Langside ; and on the 15th, Mary had got
beyond the borders, and entered England. Lord Herries, Fleming, and others
of her attendants, had, on their knees, implored her not to venture thither, but
both her courage and her wisdom seem to have forsaken her on this occasion,
and in spite of all their remonstrances, she hired a common fishing-boat, and
landed at Wirkington in Cumberland. Lord Herries, at her command, had
written to the deputy-governor of Carlisle to know what reception she was
likely to meet with, but she never waited for the answer. She hastened to
Wirkington, as we have shewn, and was from thence conducted to Carlisle,
receiving on the way, as Robertson relates, many marks of respect.
It is generally thought that all this was done, with such an amiable and romantic
confidence in the proffered friendship of Elizabeth, as to leave the latter without
a chance of escaping from the most disgusting charges of violated friendship,
broken pledges, and insidious delusion. Robertson states, that Elizabeth had
invited Mary to take refuge in England, and had promised to meet her in
person, and to give her such a reception as was due to a Queen and an ally.*
* The memorable story of the ring has something very questionable in it. From Camden's
account anybody would think it was sent to Elizabeth after the battle of Langside, as a prelude to
Mary's reception in England in the character of a fugitive. But from Mary's own letter to Elizabeth in
1582, copied by Camden himself, it appears that the ring was sent before the battle, and that, as
Rapin has shewn, in correction of Camden, she entered England before she had any answer from
Elizabeth. The state of things besides was materially changed. The ring and the promise of
protection, were sent and made before the murder of Darnley, and as it, was afterwards alleged,
" when she carried herself well, by her miscarriage of herself afterwards, this ground failed." —
See Strype's Annals, iii. 234, 235. Still however we must maintain, that at the first she did receive
protection and was treated as a Queen. In short to use the words of Elizabeth's own commission
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 451
Queen Elizabeth was certainly not well satisfied with the summary manner in
which Mary had been deposd by her subjects, though she might well think, that
with regard to an union and perpetual amity between the two kingdoms, there
was more chance of friendship under Murray as Regent, than under Mary as
Queen ; — if Murary therefore were left in possession of the regency, and
guardianship of the royal infant, Mary might possibly be invited by Elizabeth
to take refuge from the heat of these revolutionary movements in England ;* if
her release from Lochleven could by any fair means be accomplished ; but the
case became very different, when Mary's escape from imprisonment threw her
entirely into the hands of the Hamiltons, the declared enemies of Murray. This
party, having the Archbishop of St. Andrew's at its head, was decidedly against
all amity with England, and much more in the interests of France. Was Mary
to be sent back to head this party against Murray and his Protestant adherents,
to the ruin and destruction of the friends of England, and in every way
to the advancement of the French interests? The Duke of Chatelherault himself
was in France four months after Mary's flight, and proposed to come over in the
character of the Queen's lieutenant, as Knox, in his usual rough style, wrote to
Mr. John Wood, the Regent's Secretary, Sept. 10, 1568. "We look daily," says
he, " for the arrival of the Duke and his Frenchmen, sent to restore Satan to his
kingdom, in the person of his dearest lieutenant; sent, I say, to repress religion,
not from the King of France, but from the Cardinal of Lorrain, in favour of his
dearest niece. — Let England take heed, for surely their neighbours' houses are
on fire. — Without support we are not able to withstand the force of domestical
enemies, much less the puissance of France, the substance of the Pope, and the
malice of the house of Guise.'' — And as Knox then expected, the Duke did soon
to her Ministers at York, "with as much favour and comfort as the hardness of the time, the
nature of the place, and other circumstances for the which her subjects pretended their separation
from her, and have submitted themselves to the Prince her son, could permit."
* Hume gives Elizabeth credit for the most generous and friendly feelings towards Mary from
the first moment of her captivity, and attributes to Cecil the change that took place in her mind,
when it became necessary to decide upon the conduct that should be pursued in regard to the
royal fugitive, and to act upon motives of policy, rather than generosity. — If this were so it takes
much from the reproaches cast upon the English Queen, while it certainly does not detract from
the merit of Cecil, who was to look to the policy of the case, and weigh all those important cir-
cumstances, affecting the security of Elizabeth, England, and the English crown, on which Hume
himself insists. In fact the stake was too important a one, to be lightly considered, as will be
seen in the text.
452 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
arrive, with a large sum of money raised by the Popish Princes of the continent,
and in his retinue two assassins to dispatch Murray ; though for some time he
escaped the fury of his opponents.
It might have been generous, and certainly quite heroically so, to have
returned Mary to Scotland, there to revenge her own wrongs, and further her
own purposes, and the purposes of her friends, adverse as they must have been
to the interests of England, and of the friends of England in Scotland. Those
who look only as we have before said, to the moral bearings of the case, seem
almost to have concluded that Elizabeth should have sent her back, with such a.
powerful force, as might have disarmed all her rebellious subjects, and reinstated
her in her full regal authority.* But Mary had unquestionably not behaved so
well to Elizabeth as to deserve this ? If Elizabeth had been compelled, by any
movement amongst her Popish subjects to withdraw from England, into France
or Spain, Germany, Rome, or even Scotland, is it at all reasonable to suppose,
from the treatment she received from the Catholic powers, on her accession,
that they would have concurred in arming, to reinstate her upon the throne, or
that Mary would have foreborne to take advantage of her misfortunes to put
the crown of England upon her own head ? We cannot bring ourselves to believe
that Elizabeth would have found any such favour at the hands of any Catholic
Prince in Europe, and least of all from Mary, who had, in defiance of her rights,
been persuaded to assume not only the arms, but the very title of Queen of
England and Ireland.
Mary, though she might undoubtedly be a just object of commiseration, as
having fallen into misfortunes, did not come into England so pure and imma-
culate as to be an object of unqualified respect. However much her avowed
advocates may be disposed to sneer at the virtues and moral character of
Elizabeth, we can never get over the facts we have dwelt upon, of Mary's
marriage with Bothwell, in defiance of all the imputations upon his character, |
* Mr. Hallam, in his Constitutional History of England, seems to think that had Elizabeth
adopted the most generous plan of restoring Mary, by force of arms, the latter, reigning there
"with tarnished honour and diminished power, must have continually depended on the support
of England, and become little better than a vassal of its Sovereign." We confess we see not these
consequences ; the party opposed to Murray, and backed by France, and other Catholic powers,
would scarcely have suffered her to reign long under such ignominious circumstances.
f This should be attended to, for it may be seen from a note in Cecil's hand published by An-
derson, June 8, 1568, that what Elizabeth chiefly alleged against her, while she continued at
Carlisle was, that she had not sufficiently attended to " the avenge of the death of her husband,
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 453
independently of the murder of Darnley, of which we see no means of clearing
him ; while strong suspicions remain against herself.
Again, if Mary were not to be sent back to triumph over her foes, was she to
be sent back and deliberately put into their power ? We have seen, that to the
party opposed to her, she had given such offence, or rather so much degraded
herself in their eyes, that some had doomed her to perpetual imprisonment,
some to trial and condemnation,* as accessary to the death of her husband.
Was she to be sent to France ? — She might, possibly, have gone there, instead
of coming to England, but for reasons known to herself. The Queen Mother
was still living, and in power there, and her personal enemy ; with much less
provocation and offence, on the part of Mary, than had been offered to Elizabeth.
In truth, she came to England as an asylum, and though she found it a very
melancholy, and ultimately a very fatal one, it yet was an asylum, on her Jirst
coming to it, from troubles and mortifications, without number, awaiting her
elsewhere."!"
It is an error into which many fall, of considering things which happened in
succession, as being all so foreseen, premeditated, and determined upon, as to
amount, from the beginning, to a settled plan, from which there could be no
chance of deviation ; because Mary, on her resort to England, soon fell into
captivity, and continued in captivity for the long space of eighteen years,;]: and
and the infamy of marrying a person, known not only as the principal murderer, but also having
a lawful wife alive." The remark of the Abbe Millut upon this single fact is very just. " Tout
donnoit lieu de penser que Marie, esclave de sa passion pour Bothwel, avoit en part a son crime;
sans lui imputer cette barbarie, on ne pouvoit s'empecher de la croire coupable d'une honteuse
foiblesse." — Element d'Histoire d'dngleterre.
* Lord Errol, we are reminded by Mary's advocates \Tytler, i. 98], offended by the proceed-
ings of the Parliament on Murray's assumption of the Regency, went over to the Hamiltons, to
whom he conveyed the information, that the party he quitted had declared, that if they should
be " menaced and boisted by the favourers of the Queen, they would send her head to them."
We are sorry to say, this was too much in the spirit of those sad times, to be regarded as alto-
gether a vain threat ; and though ultimately, indeed, Elizabeth had to bear the blame of such a
bloody sacrifice, yet, at the period of which we are writing, she did well certainly not to deliver
Mary to her/oes in Scotland, as was asked, but refused.
t We would appeal to the advocates of Mary to say, whether Elizabeth might not, probably,
have been rid of her for ever, as a competitor, by ungenerously delivering her up to those from
whom she had escaped, and to whom it is thought Elizabeth was so partially devoted.
I It is rather singular, but true, that this long term of an eighteen years' captivity, was shorter
by ten years than the captivity of one of Mary's fellow-sufferers, of almost equal rank, though
454 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
at last fell by the hands of a public executioner, it is judged that Elizabeth had
all these cruel designs in her mind, from this very time, to the final consummation
of Mary's troubles ; whereas, considering the eighteen years' continual dis-
quiet she gave to Elizabeth and her Ministers, the wonder is that, in such an
age, she should have lived so long. Only fourteen years had elapsed, since the
incomparable Lady Jane Grey, for aspiring to the crown of England (though
the offence was known to all to be in no manner her own), had been hurried to
the scaffold, before she had completed so many years of life, as Mary was kept
in confinement ; and yet the very rapidity of her fall and execution, seems to
have rendered her case, in the estimation of the world, a less crime, or, at the
least, a less aggravated crime, than the fall and execution of Mary ; but even,
upon this comparison, it would seem that the resentments of Elizabeth were by
no means so quick or so decisive as those of her sister Mary. The latter has
never been half so much detested for her precipitate execution of the perfectly
blameless and innocent Lady Jane Grey, as has been the case with Elizabeth,
for sparing the life of Mary eighteen years,* who would unquestionably have
dethroned her if she could, who had made no secret of her own claims to the
crown being superior to those of Elizabeth, and had never regarded the latter as
little known, and little thought of; and certainly, we may add, as undeserving a sufferer, as was
ever exposed to such a misfortune. When William, Prince of Orange, in the course of this very
year, was cited to appear before the Spanish authorities in the Low Countries, as a rebel (le
chef dcs rebelles, they were pleased to call him), his eldest son, Philip William, Count de Buren,
only thirteen years of age, was seized, while pursuing his studies at the University of Louvain,
and being conveyed to Spain, kept prisoner there for the long space of twenty-eight years, during
which time his father was assassinated, at the instigation of that monster, Philip II. And yet
how little has been heard of this young man, and how much has his hard case been overlooked
by historians; to say nothing of the sufferings of his father, thus deprived for ever of the society
of the young Prince. This gross act of tyranny, however, made a hero of the injured parent, and
terminated in the freedom of the Seven United Provinces ; and it is to the glory of Elizabeth,
and her great Minister, that they were instrumental in procuring this great triumph over bigotry,
tyranny, and persecution.
* It is thought unfair to look for any excess of tender feelings in those who are bred in a
butcher's shop, and yet little less can be said of Elizabeth's own education. The case of her
own mother was quite remarkable. On the 1st of May, 1536, she was with the King at Green-
wich, dancing happily and merrily, at the justs, between her brother, Lord Rochford, and Henry
Norris; on the 2d, she was imprisoned; on the 15th, tried and condemned ; on the 17th, bereft
of her brother and friends, who died on the scaffold, and on the 19th executed; the 20th, the
King married again, and another was put in possession of her bed and honours.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 455
the true Queen of England. We dwell the longer upon this, because we
propose to pass over the great point of contention between Mary and her
accuser, we mean the letters and sonnets produced before the Commissioners at
York. We want no proof of Mary's great imprudence in marying Both well ; in
our own estimation, the fact speaks for itself; and if the letters, &c. were all
forgeries, the proof of their being such does not invalidate or set aside the fact
of the marriage, and a previous criminal attachment ; for criminal it must have
been in-foro consdentue, as they were both married. We are sorry to say these
things of Mary, but as her case must for ever remain a blot upon the character
of Elizabeth and 4ier Counsellors, we feel that it belongs to this history, to
ascertain, as well as we can, the actual course of things, that while we deplore,
witfr others, the shocking catastrophe of the story, we may, as much as possible,
reduce it to its proper bearings, as an event of the most unfeeling, insidious,
intriguing, and revolutionary period of European history.
It is so well known, that in a few months after Mary's arrival in England, her
conduct was submitted to the judgment of certain Commissioners appointed by
the Queen, upon charges brought against her by Murray, her half-brother, and
others of her subjects, that we scarcely think it necessary to dwell upon the par-
ticulars of so extraordinary an inquisition. The great object on the part of
England, no doubt was, to afford Elizabeth a plea or an excuse for detaining
Mary, as unfit to rule any longer in Scotland. If some of the charges against
her were forged, we do not wish to palliate the cruelty and wickedness of such
gross fictions, we should rather say they were quite unnecessary. She had been
deposed, and perhaps wrongfully deposed ; but the more wrongfully^ the more
danger she would have incurred, had Elizabeth sought to force her back, upon
her dissatisfied subjects, to the disturbance of the Regency, and the ruin of
all the hopes arising from the minority of an infant in the hands of guardians,
favourable to England and the Protestant church in both countries.* But had
* Having already observed, that we should have proceeded with more confidence in pronouncing
the judgment we have been led to form, in regard to the affairs of England and Scotland, during
the course of the sixteenth century, could we have foreseen that we should have the support of
Mr. Turner in his discussion of the same topics, we may assuredly be excused since he has got the
start of us in the publication of his history, for availing ourselves of his opinions, while our own
work is actually passing through the press ; since they serve in many points so strongly to corro-
borate our own conclusions. The following passage, had we seen it before, might more properly,
perhaps, have appeared elsewhere ; but it is not too late to introduce it at this point of our history.
456* MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
Elizabeth, it may be asked, a right to interfere so far ? Murray had the sanction
of the three estates of the realm for the steps he had taken ; and though abuses
without end have been heaped on the Parliament, as well as on Murray, upon the
supposition that the latter was, all through the business, a monster of iniquity,
and quite undeserving of such support, he was certainly thereby made the de
facto Governor of the realm. It was necessary, however, for Elizabeth and her
Council to consider what might be the consequences in regard to the safety of
England and the reformed church, if Mary were at large, especially as there
was no saying where else she could be safe. Her party had been beaten in
Scotland, and though, upon her return, it might be strengthened by supplies
from France, could it be expected that Elizabeth should contribute in such a
manner to her own great danger, and perhaps destruction. And as to the adverse
party amongst her subjects, her escape from Lochleven had only exasperated
their rancour against her, and rendered more manifest the dangers they might
incur by consenting to her restoration.
But it is time to notice the events as they occurred. Mary, as we have shewn,
arrived in England on the 16th of May, 1568 : she appears immediately to have
written a long letter to Elizabeth, complaining of the wrongs committed against
her, and desiring to be admitted to her presence ; the latter, without much
prudery, Elizabeth might reasonably enough decline, considering the heavy
charges under which Mary lay, and which we cannot bring ourselves to think
were without foundation. Robertson gives an exceedingly good account of the
Speaking of the first interference of England, 1559, to prevent the introduction of a French army
into Scotland, Mr. Turner observes, " from the preceding facts, taken from the confidential
letters and dispatches written at the time of their occurrence, it appears that Elizabeth made no
unnecessary, selfish, or wilful interference with the Scotish nation. Its perturbations and con-
flicts unavoidably involved both herself and her nation in their vortex ; and unless she had
possessed the physical power of separating Scotland from her own realm, and of transporting it
to the Archipelago or to the Pacific, she could not avoid a precautionary and preservative inter-
position ; but when compelled to intermeddle, her objects and conduct were patriotic and bene-
volent to both countries, as well as indispensable to the security of her own crown. They were
directed to prevent the French from being masters of Scotland, and from extinguishing the
Reformation there against the will of its people ; and to preserve England and herself, and thereby
Protestant Europe, from the calamities and perils which would unavoidably follow, if France and
the Pope should succeed in overwhelming and destroying those who in Scotland were opposing
their power." As the policy thus commended was the policy of Cecil, we have surely a right to
transcribe this long passage, especially as affording a proof of two historians totally unconnected
^nd (I am sorry to add) unknown to each other, arriving at exactly the same conclusion.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 457
difficulties which, in every point of view, presented themselves to the considera-
tion of the English Council ; but when he says, that " with Elizabeth and her
Council, the question was not what was most just and generous, but what was
most beneficial to herself and the English nation;" he speaks the truth indeed,
but in an ungracious manner. It looks as if there were nothing but an unqua-
lified selfishness at the bottom of all their proceedings ; as if, not only all justice
and generosity were dismissed from their thoughts, but that they were resolved
to adopt the safest plan of imprisoning Mary, in positive contempt of all justice
and generosity. But we may ask the question, Did they adopt the safest plan ?
Were they running no hazard in detaining Mary? Let Mary herself answer this
question. In a letter addressed by her to Elizabeth from Carlisle on the 21st of
June, she very plainly tells her, that unless she be soon succoured in the way
she expects, she shall feel obliged to apply both to her good brother the King
of France, and the King of Spain to take up her quarrel ; and the letter thus
written was sent to Elizabeth by a gentleman who had actually come to her with
a special message from Charles IXy However beneficial, therefore, it might be
thought by Elizabeth's Council to support the Protestant party in Scotland, and
detain Mary, it could only be done, almost as a case of necessity, and at an
enormous risk. The main objects, we may safely say, were to secure, if possible,
amity between the kingdoms, and the common interest of the two Protes-
tant Churches. In pursuit of these objects, Elizabeth and her Council
determined to support the Scotch Protestants against the whole of Catholic
Europe, keeping the Queen in England, instead of delivering her up to her
exasperated subjects; but, as we shall see, to the perpetual disturbance and
annoyance of Elizabeth's Government, all which might have been avoided by
ungenerously giving her up to the party from whom she had fled in such alarm
after the battle of Langside ; and who, in all likelihood, violently, or by trial,
would have had her put to death.* Those who fall as Mary fell, generally sink
* We are not bound to include Murray in the list of those who would have put her to death, if
he could have preserved her life from the vengeance of others ; but we doubt of the latter. We
have already noticed the friendly conversation he is, by Mary's advocates, reported to have held
with her at Lochleven, but which they represent, particularly Mad"e. de Keralio, to have been
altogether insidious, and we are now desirous of copying a passage in a letter from Murray to Mary,
Aug. 7, 1568, which Madlle. de Keralio herself has put among her pieces justificative!. " Madame,
Je crois que vous-meme ne doutez pas, et tout le monde, peut juger, que si mon intention avoit ete
d'abreger vos jours, de la maniere dont les chases ont ete depuis un an, je n'aurois, pas manque de
moyens, mais jamais la volont£ n'en est entree dans mon coeur." — Notwithstanding the foul and
VOL. II. 3 N
458 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1668.
under a preponderating weight of enemies. It is very probable, that had not
Mary's friends very much at all times outnumbered her enemies, she would
never have fallen in the way she did ; but what friends were they ? certainly, if
the truth be spoken, all the enemies of Elizabeth and England. It was no very
safe undertaking for Elizabeth to venture to become the goaler of such a prisoner,
we will not say for eighteen years, for that, we will venture to affirm, was not
thought of at this time, but for as many months. This is pretty evident from
a letter which Cecil himself received and deciphered from Sir Henry Norris,
dated at Paris, July 7th, 1 568, that is about sixteen days after Mary had written
to Elizabeth the letter referred to above, sending it by a Frenchman just come
from France ; the information conveyed to Cecil, being to the following effect :
" The sixth of this present, Right Honourable, about nine of the clock in the
morning, I was advertised that one would speak to me, without the town,
betwixt Paris and Shallenton; whither if I could come, he would declare that which
was of importance, and that touched the Queen's Majesty very near ; which I
did perform, and went to him forthwith. And afore I had overtaken him, he finding
me coming, sent away two archers which he had in his company, himself being
Provost Marshall : who wished I would advertise that the Queen's Majesty did
hold the wolf that would devour her, and that it is conspired 'twixt the King of
Spain, the Pope, and the French King, that the Queen's Majesty should be
destroyed, whereby the Q. of Scots might succeed her Majesty. Here may your
Honour further see their fruits whereby the trees are known, and further sayeth
that there is an Italian that is much conversant and of chiefest counsell with
the Earl of Arundell, as also with the Spanish Ambassador, that being privily
taken could disclose much of the treason that is to be wrought against the
Queen's Majesty as he sayeth."
He proceeds to make mention of preparations on foot to further such designs,
and at last breaks out into the following expression of concern and apprehension.
" Surely, under correction of your Honour, considering the great treason pre-
gross invectives with which Murray has been loaded by Mary's advocates ; for our own part we give
credit to the sincerity of the above passages: his whole letter is worth reading. Though Madlk.
de Keralio is pleased to call it " unmodele d'audace et d' orgueil dans une ame criminelle." Such
is the force of prejudice. Mary had certainly borne amis against Murray when he tried to save
her from one of the false steps she had taken, though he had till then been to her a most useful
and faithful Minister. These things ought to be well weighed and considered by those who are
likely to be led astray by the boundless declamations of Murray's accusers.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 459
paring by the aforesaid, of God I would wish, that the Queen of Scots were
rather re-delivered, than the Queen's Majesty to stand in these perilous terms,
both abroad and at home, as this man willed to advertise that she doth." If it
should be thought that this information was given merely to compel Elizabeth
and her Ministers to give Mary up, and that no such conspiracy really existed,
let us hear what the Prince of Conde thought of the designs against Elizabeth
only a few months after.
" Le diet Seigneur Prince supplie a sa Majeste vouloir considerer, combien
ceste cause (the cause of the Protestants generally) luy est commune, et de
particulier interest et de consequence, tant par les ligues et confederations, que
les princes papistiques ont avec le pape, pour exterminer les Princes et peuples
faisant professione de la vraye religion, (entre lesquels sa Majeste scait que son
Roiaulme a este le premier persecute du temps de ses predecesseurs, par les
impostures du Pape) que aussi que celluy, qui est autheur de toutes les guerres
en France, c'est le Cardinal de Lorraine et ses adherents ; parce qu' il n' est pas
seulement Ennemy de sa Majeste a cause de la haine generalle de la Religion,
mais encore plus en particulier, pour raison de la Heine d* Ecosse sa neice, et a
bien monstres par cy devant qu' il ne pretendoit par tant r'establir le papisme en
Engleterre, comme du tout faveur sa dicte Majeste de son roiaulme, et en
invester sa dicte neice ; et que comme ce a este ung moien par lequel il
usurpa le gouvernement de la France du Temps du Roi Francois II., il tache
a se servir de mesme moyen encores a present, du moien du cession de la dicte
Reyne d' Ecosse a Monsieur frere du Roi du droict qu'elle pretend au Royaulme
if Angleterre, dont le Pape luy bailie la confirmation et investiture, eta despeche
a ces fins Hannibal Rochelyn ; encourt promest exciter touts les Rois et Princes
Papistiques a luy aider de leurs forces, pour fair valoir son investiture."*
Goodall, in his inquiry into the murder of King Henry Darnley, seems to treat
this as a mere pretence of the Prince of Conde, " in order to induce Elizabeth
Queen of England to assist him the more effectually to usurp the throne of
France, under the pretext of setting up the Protestant religion." He adds, that
the Prince stated that the Cardinal Lorrain had prevailed with his niece to make
a cession, and that the Pope had confirmed the gift, Sic. This is not quite clear
from the paper, but at all events Goodall has no means of discrediting the
* Haynes, 473, 4, from the instructions of the Prince of Conde, entitled, Instructions baillees
par Monseigneur le Prince de Conde au sieur de Cavaignes, Conseiller du Roy en sa cour de
Parlement de Thoulouse, envoyee de sa part a la Royne d' Angleterre; from a copy signed by
Cavaignes, and endorsed by Secretary Cecil.
460 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
story, but by supposing, that the Prince might have got papers to that effect
" trumped up," as his expression is, thinking him quite capable of such forgeries.
At the same time those who were opposed to the Prince, and to the Protestants in
France and Scotland, he seems to consider quite as incapable of any thing bad*
This then is surely sufficient to shew, that Elizabeth, in refusing or declining
to re-deliver Mary into the hands of Murray, whom, after her escape from
Lochleven, she had a second time opposed with arms, at the head of the
Hamiltons, his mortal enemies, detained her as a prisoner at her own peril ;
not through such wild and wanton caprice, or such insignificant female jealousy,
as those who know only the surface of history, have been prone to impute to
her. In a letter from Mary to Elizabeth on the 28th of July, she herself
speaks, of having at that time, stayed some proceedings of her party in Scot-
land, as well as of the Kings of France and Spain, to see first what Elizabeth
would do for her; having, in the mean while, as she says, " pour nous entre
entendre mieulx, affin que venant au point, ne se trouve difficultay, je luif ay
commande ecrire a Mayster Cessille, tout ce qu' il m' a raporte de par vous
(par ce aussi quil dit 1' avoir oui de lui de Monsieur de Lessester) aveques
ma response sur tous les points de sa charge." This letter was written from
Bolton. In it, as usual, she pays Elizabeth a compliment which could scarcely
be sincere. " Tout foyes, sur votre parolle, il n' est rien que je n' enterprisse,
car je ne doubtai jamays de votre honneur et royalle fidelitay." It would be
most extraordinary, if Mary did really confide in Elizabeth to such a degree ;
we extract the passage merely to shew, how common such expressions are
in letters of that description. It was evidently Mary's plan to spare Elizabeth,
and throw all the blame she could upon her Ministers ; of these Ministers,
Leicester and Cecil seem to be regarded by Mary as the chiefest; others are men-
tioned, but it will be necessary as we proceed, probably, to make these severally
accountable for the, advice they gave to the Queen ; it will then be seen who
those were that took the most pains to embarrass matters. Cecil's great
purposes undoubtedly were to guard and protect Elizabeth, her crown and
kingdom, and the Protestant interests in all parts of Europe. Leicester's
views might be the same, though prosecuted with a different spirit.
* Of the information given to Elizabeth through the Provost Marshall, p. 458, Mr. Turner rinds
a good deal to say, being disposed to attribute it to no less a person than Catherine de Medicis,
whose interference proceeded not of course from any love to Elizabeth, or care for her person, but
purely from her jealousy and dislike of Mary. The case is a curious one, and may deserve
consideration. f Tne Lord Berries.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 461
But there was scarcely room left, for that justice and generosity, which
Elizabeth is said so grossly to have disregarded. In strict justice Mary should
have been restored to her kingdom ; but how was Elizabeth to restore her ?
Had she the power of convening afresh the three estates of Scotland, to decide
upon the question of her forced resignation ; had they not already decided
upon it ; fully accepted her resignation, and confirmed the Regency, in a Par-
liament, wherein many of Mary's warmest friends were present ?* Was there
any hope, probability, or chance, at that time, of any dispassionate discussion
of such a question, could the Parliament have been re-assembled ? Scotland
was already in a state of civil contention ; a contention in which it was almost
impossible for the Ministers of Elizabeth not to take a part ; or in short, not
to side with Murray and the Protestants. The other party had not only the
Queen on their side (rather by accident than good will), but at their back,
France and Spain and all the Catholic states ; had Elizabeth sought to do
Mary the justice of restoring her to her throne, it must have been not only in
conjunction with a party adverse to her restoration, but in opposition to powers
with whom she was quite unable to contend, if combined against her. In short
there could have been no security to Elizabeth, had she attempted in this way
to do Mary justice ; but it will of course be said, she did her great injustice,
by listening to the foul charges of her subjects against her, and by a very
partial consideration of her case. Elizabeth was certainly often led to stoop
below herself, to save appearances on this arduous occasion. She had high
notions of royalty, and hated rebels ; she must have known that the more
power Mary possessed, the more insecure her own state must be ; the abridg-
ment of that power, therefore, must have appeared to give security to herself,
* There is no portion of history in which it has been more common with writers to beg the
question(&s\t has been called), than in the melancholy story of Mary Queen of Scots. With regard to
the sanction given by this Parliament to Murray's regency, one of Mary's advocates, concluding
that nobody living or dead could doubt the perfidy of Murray, thus writes, "a la honte de la
nation, cet homme perfide ne trouva qu"; obeissance et soumission dans les trois ordres de 1' etat ;
les deux chambres donnerent une sanction absolue a toutes les mesures concertees par lui et ses
adherents." This is to conclude at once that there could be no sound judgment in these pro-
ceedings, and that we are capable of deciding upon those remote events, more correctly than the
Scottish legislature of the day. Parliaments may indeed be corrupt and partial in their decisions,
but if we are to listen to none but the dissentients to determine this question, our own Revolu-
tionary Parliament that placed the Prince of Orange on the throne of his father-in-law, might be
spoken of, by the Jacobites, exactly in the above terms.
4(j-2 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568
though on all occasions, where she could, she wished to cast from her the
reproach of supporting rebels in any wilful disobedience to their lawful
Sovereign. The adversaries of Mary, therefore, must have appeared to
her in two distinct lights; she wished, probably, to have Mary's power
abridged, and to have her authority transferred to her son under the regency
of a Protestant Lord ; but it does not follow that she liked the agents, or was
desirous of too openly encouraging them. This led her into inconsistencies,
which have a good deal exposed her to the obloquy, and in some instances
to the ridicule* of her opponents. The cases to which we allude are so well
known, that we need not enlarge upon them : again, in regard to the exercise
of generosity towards Mary ; it may make some difference in our judgment of
what ensued, if we allow ourselves to reflect, that though Mary seems to have
made a mistake in flying to England, it is almost impossible that she should
have made that choice and determination (notwithstanding all that has been
written so romantically about rings and pledges) in full assurance, that
Elizabeth would do, what every generous mind must feel that she should have
done, could it have been reduced to a mere question of friendship, generosity,
or sympathy. But Mary, unfortunately, by her recent conduct, had thrown
herself a good deal out of the protection of all such moral obligations. It was
not in Elizabeth's power, still less in the power of her Ministers and Coun-
sellors, to consider Mary's case as detached from the hazards of political
mischief. Elizabeth has abundance of foibles, if not faults to answer for, after
all that can be said, but having by accident (for so it certainly seems to have
been) got Mary into her power at so very critical a moment, her release and
liberty, and indeed her treatment generally, became immediately a very per-
plexed question of policy ; she could not be sent back to Scotland, without
danger of her life,t or fresh imprisonment ; or else to join a party adverse to
England; if left to go where she chose, she might manifestly pass to some place,
where her presence alone would be likely to work great ill to Elizabeth, to
England, and to the reformed religion ; if all persons should be allowed access
to her in England, the Catholics were too numerous, and too designing, to be
trusted with such opportunities ;J if admitted to Elizabeth's court and presence,
* We refer to the reproving of Murray, &c. before the foreign ministers.
•f Some in Scotland, as we have shewn, would have had her regularly tried there, and condemned,
t Northumberland, who afterwards headed a rebellion in her favour, claimed her as his prize,
because she had first landed within his liberty.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGflLEY. 403
how strange would it have appeared to those who believed her guilty of con-
niving at the death of Darnley, an heir presumptive* to the English throne,
and while his parents, the Earl and Countess of Lennox, were yet imploring
vengeance on her head, and that of her guilty husband ! There was great
danger besides, in admitting Mary so far into the kingdom, a danger strongly
insisted on by many eminent statesmen ; a circumstance deserving notice,
because Elizabeth's refusal to admit her to her presence, has been as usual
attributed to much more frivolous causes. "Elizabeth n'etoit point, dans la
disposition d' appeller a sa cour une princesse si belle, si jeune, si interessdnte,
et dont la reconnoissance promettoit tant d' avantages a celui qui pourroit
embrasser sa cause, et la servir." There may be some truth in the latter, but
it points to one of the alleged reasons for apprehending danger. We are
obliged to say these things, because even Robertson, with great inconsistency,
believing her to be guilty, and not altogether overlooking the difficulties we
have stated, still writes, as though she were entitled to the most unqualified
respect and compassion, as a persecuted fugitive, properly claiming either to
be immediately restored to her authority, or left at liberty to seek aid wherever
else she might choose ; aid, which to say the least of it, was likely to be
immediately directed against England, Elizabeth, and the Protestant Church
in both Countries.
The speech made by Sir Ralph Sadler before the Queen in Council upon this
great emergency, has some expressions in it so strong, and, if well-founded in
all particulars, so much to the purpose, that we cannot forbear transcribing
them. The editor of his Papers, Speeches, &c. says of the speech itself
indeed, " Sir Ralph Sadler, like Cecil, and other Counsellors of Elizabeth,
delivers an opinion more reconcilable to policy, than to generosity, good faith,
or magnanimity.'" We grant this ; but the question still remains, whether, if
Elizabeth, or her Counsellors, overlooking or disregarding the policy of the
case, had resolved to act with the heedless generosity and magnanimity some
writers so loudly insist upon, this kingdom would have derived the smallest
security from the generosity, good faith, or magnanimity of the other States of
Europe, having Mary of Scotland in their power ?"f There is nothing in the
* Darnley 's title to the crown, was considered, however, to be very questionable. — See MSS.
in the possession of the Earl of Westmoreland.
t We cannot forbear observing, that in this comparatively enlightened and civilised age, we
have had an instance of an appeal made to the generosity, magnanimity, and compassion of
England, by a crowned fugitive, and deposed Sovereign, whom the policy of Europe at large
464 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
history of the sixteenth century that could lead us to think so ; on the contrary,
we believe every advantage possible would have been taken of the imbecility,
or supineness of Elizabeth's Ministers, had they advised the Queen to act only
on the principle of generosity. We verily believe she would have been generous
only to her own ruin. But we must advert to the passages in Sir Ralph
Sadler's speech, which tend to shew the dangerous position in which Elizabeth
was placed at this critical moment. He professes to have come to the reso-
lution, after much consideration, that it could not be good, but rather most
dangerous to Elizabeth, that Mary should reign and govern in Scotland ; and
he therefore thinks it quite expedient, that she should accept and allow of the
regiment established in the young King of Scots; not to question his title, but
to take him for a King as shejinds him.* He instances the case of the Emperor
Charles V. and the French King, both of whom professed themselves ready to
acknowledge the Lady Jane Grey, on the death of Edward VI. ; though the
former must have wished to see the Princess Mary, his near relative, on the
throne of her ancestors, having a clear title by the laws of England ; and the
latter could only be seeking his own security, at the expense of that Princess,
and her Austrian connexions. " I have many times," says this sagacious and
experienced statesman, " thought of this matter; and I have considered, so far
forth as my poor wit can conceive, of the state and terms which your Majesty
standeth in at this present with all Princes abroad, specially with these which
be your vicines and neighbours, as with the K. of Spain and the French King,
and also with the Queen of Scots and Scotland ; and having entered into the
consideration of the same, I find the K. of Spain, and the French King, to be
but feigned friends to your Majesty, such as do but expect the time when they
may shew themselves open enemies, as if they may prevail in the establishment
of their Romish religion within their own dominions ; who seeth not that then
they will bend all their forces to establish the like in England ? And if they
may then find a Queen in Scotland, that pretendeth a title to the crown of
England, who seeth not that she will be a ready and apt instrument to serve
both theirs, and also her own turn ? — Where she may have aid thereunto, both
by the Pope, the King of Spain, the French King, and also by the favour of
seemed to pronounce to be a fit subject for perpetual imprisonment. It may be said he had
usurped his sovereignty. This was the very charge alleged against Elizabeth, if the Popish
States of Europe could have got her into their power.
* It was a remark of Knox, in excuse of his not publicly praying for her after her deposition,
that the States had deprived her of her power, and they must answer for it. — McCrie, vol.ii. 186.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 465
your evil subjects here at home, the Papists, which, to set up their Popish
kingdom, would not care to have a murderess and an adulteress * to reign over
* These words so openly and unreservedly proclaim Mary's imputed guilt, that it is impossible
not to look to the character of the person who uttered them, as well as to the place in which,
and the audience before whom, they were spoken. It was then, in the presence of Queen
Elizabeth, and before her Council, that Sir Ralph uttered these opprobrious terms against a
personage, whom he had known from her infancy. He was a courtier certainly, but no false one,
as far as we can learn ; he was a brave soldier, as every one knows, and not likely therefore,
even in those sad times, to degrade himself so far, as to descend to the low arts of calumny in
speaking of such an accomplished woman as Mary Queen of Scots; nor was he a man much
likely to be deceived, especially as to the affairs of Scotland. — [See what is said of him,
Haynes, 558, in the Queen's letter to Lord Sussex.] He was indeed one of the Commissioners
appointed by Elizabeth to investigate the case between Mary and her subjects ; and who, we
may ask, were the others ? The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Sussex, two of the most
upright, perhaps, of all the nobility ; and yet, what do they testify, as to the impressions they
received of Mary's guilt? — from her opponents, we grant, but upon the testimony of facts. On
the 2d of October, 1568, the Duke, writing to the Earl of Pembroke, Lord Leicester, and
Sir William Cecil, in the names of his colleagues as well as of himself, declares the case to have
been made manifest to them, as far as they could perceive ; " not forgetting how the upright
handling of this cause shall import us both in honour and honesty to the whole world."
(Goodall, ii. 154.) To a letter of the 15th of the same month, addressed to Cecil, the Duke sub-
joins the following postscript. " The Queen of Scots, in respect of herself, I think, hath better
friends of the Regent's side than of her own ;" which words Mad"e. de Keralio, after observing
that the postscriptum to this letter contained, " exactement ccs mud," strangely translates as
follows : " Par le respect qu'elle inspire, je pense que la Reine d'Ecosse a plus d'amis du cote du
Regent quedu sien propre." — (iii. 316.) There is, certainly, something very striking in the Duke's
remark, and it may well deserve consideration. In fact, Mary's Commissioners, in pressing
Murray, Morton, &c. too far, as not clear themselves of the murder of Darnley, accused Bothwcll
also. — (See Tytler's Inquiry, ii. 35.) How could Mary be benefited by this? She had boasted
of the acquittal of Bothwell, and many times declared her assurance of his innocence. If any
of the Scottish Commissioners, therefore, were actually concerned with Bothwel!, it was impossible
to suppose they should allow themselves to be so accused, without availing themselves of every
opportunity in their power to prove the Queen's too great intimacy with the chief conspirator before
the murder; and even, without the letters, this might, assuredly, have been done to a certain
extent, but with more privacy. If the letters, therefore, were genuine (a point not yet admitted,
though not so disproved as to be given up by the other party), they might have been kept back,
had not the Queen's Commissioners provoked the other party to bring them forward.— (See very
particularly Murray's Instructions, in Goodall, ii. 86.) To shew that Elizabeth's three Com-
missioners were strongly impressed with a sense of her guilt, Mr. Turner refers to the Earl of
Sussex's letter to Cecil, October 22, 1568, in Lodge's Illustrations; Sir Ralph Sadler's extracts
from her letters, and accompanying remarks, State Papers, ii. 237 ; and to Norfolk's letter to
the Earl of Pembroke, 12th October, 1568, in Anderson, iv. 77.
VOL. II. 3 O
466 MEMOIRS OF LORD BtfRGHLEY. [1568.
them? — Marry, I trust your Majesty will so provide, that they shall find no
such Queen in Scotland.
" But, to return where I was, I find, as I sayed, the K. of Spayne and the
French King to be but faint and feigned friends,* which only abide the time
to declare themselves open enemies. The Q. of Scotts, also, I find to be a
secret deadly enemy to your Majesty, lacking only power and liberty to execute
and shew her malice openly ; and, for Scotland, I find it is divided in two parts
and factions, whereof one is addicte to the young King of Scotland, minding to
maintain his state and government, and to continue the religion in Scotland ;
and they which do shew themselves to be of that party, do offer themselves to
adhere to your Highness, and to depend wholly at your devotion. The other
party, and faction, do shew themselves addicted to the Q. of Scotts, seeming to
have an intention and desire to have her restored to her former state and
government in Scotland ; but rather, I think, they mean, under that colour, to
advance the House of the Hamiltons, having always been a mortal enmity
between the two houses, the Stewarts and the Hamiltons, and they which be of
this party depend altogether upon France ; and with them your rebells also do
join themselves, hoping, with such aid as they look for out of France and Flan-
ders, to be able to trouble your state, as well by procurement of a new stir and
rebellion within the realm, as by invasions and incursions upon your frontiers,
and otherwise; wherein they lack no good will to offend and annoy your Majesty
by all the ways and means they can. Thus I find that your Majesty hath many
enemies."
This able statesman then proceeds to consider the means in her Majesty's
hands, of thwarting the purposes of these many enemies, considering them
regularly one after the other, and suggesting such schemes of policy as were
common in those days, and scarcely to be avoided; or rather, indeed, not to be
avoided, but at the positive risk of having similar practices, adopted with success
against the unresisting, and more scrupulous party. Policy indeed bears a
bad name, when it is introduced to overrule moral obligations, or violate any of
the pure, perfect, and unoffending principles of Christianity ; but state policy is,
* We must not judge of the real temper of the Princes and Potentates of Europe in the
sixteenth century, from any of their public professions of friendship. At the very time that
Philip II. pretended to be upon the best terms with Elizabeth, and interested for her kingdom,
he could sharply reprove the Duke of Alva, for having written friendly of England, calling it
that Perdido y Aeabado Reyno.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 467
on many occasions, rather to be viewed as an extremity to which a nation is
brought by the necessity of defending itself against the hostile, not only attacks,
but designs of other states ; for to await the attacks, is but to afford time for the
forming more powerful confederacies, and more extended hostile alliances.*
The policy recommended by Sir Ralph Sadler is, certainly, that disturbing
policy, which gives so great offence to certain historians of the times of which
we are writing, but which, to those who look very narrowly into the exact cir-
cumstances of those times, must appear, we should think, the only policy capable
of securing the crown on the head of Elizabeth, her kingdom in any tolerable
degree of peace and quietness, or her Protestant subjects in the enjoyment of
that religious liberty so lately bestowed upon them. — But to proceed. The
sum of Sir Ralph's advice, in regard to foreign enemies, is couched in the
following applicable terms :
" If they have any intention to offend or annoy your Majesty, they have no
way so fit nor so proper for them to do it, as by the way of Scotland : keep
them out of Scotland, that they set no foot there, and your Majesty shall the
less need to care for any offence or annoyance they can do to your Majesty
elsewhere ; for, your navy being on the sea, they shall not be able to land any
where in England, to do any great harm; and, therefore, your Majesty hath
specially to foresee and provide that they get no foot nor entry into Scotland ;
and the way thereto, the best way to meet with the same, is for your Majesty to
enter first, to set foot first in Scotland, and there to join with that party which
do offer themselves to your Highness for the maintenance of the state and
government of the young King of Scots, and for continuance of the religion in
Scotland.
" To conclude, I am of opinion, that it is better for your Majesty to maintain
and allow of the title and regiment of the young King, of whom you may have a
friend, and by him the amity of Scotland, than to admit the title and government
of the Q. of Scots, of whom you shall be sure to have an utter enemy, and
by her the enmity of all Scotland ; besides the great dangers and perils which,
by her, may ensue to your own state and surety ; which perils have been so
* " The science of politics, if it content itself with devising remedies for immediate danger,
instead of acting with preventive foresight, ceases to be a science ; it becomes a mere course of
expedients, and shifts, and subterfuges, more likely (as all history bears witness) to accelerate
the downfal of a state, than to delay it." — Quarterly Review of Hallam's Constitutional History
of England.
468 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
sufficiently laid before your Majesty by my Lords and others here, that it were
superfluous in me to make any further repetition of the same."
Sir Ralph knew, perhaps, more of the state of Scotland, and the history of
parties there, from the close of the reign of Henry VIII. than any other
Counsellor the Queen could have; in point of age and personal experience,
rather more than Cecil; having the advantage of him to the amount of thirteen
years, but no more : as soon as Cecil arrived at the age of observation, he had
exactly the same scenes to contemplate, and equal means of acquiring knowledge.
These were, then, Sir Ralph's sentiments as expressed and delivered in the
Queen's presence ; had he so delivered himself merely to give countenance to,
and encourage, the vindictive and malignant passions of an angry and jealous
woman, surely the history of the times, so largely entered into, would not, upon
examination, be found to agree with his opinions, or to corroborate his suspicions
and apprehensions of danger to Elizabeth, to England, and the Protestant faith
of both realms, should she undertake, on her own authority, to restore Mary to
her throne ; but we have not the smallest hesitation to say, that we think his
view of matters was correct in all its parts ; that there is nothing at all exag-
gerated in what he developes of the mischievous designs entertained against
England, and chiefly, if not entirely, by the way of Scotland. Many writers so
confuse things, as to suppose, that in the decision taken at this time to put
restraint upon Mary, her death, by decapitation, which did not take place until
eighteen years afterwards, was fully decided upon ; and that, from this moment,
the door of mercy was effectually shut against her. We are not prepared to
say how much of rancour there might be, at this time, to be found in the breasts
of some who were opposed to her, especially among her own subjects ; but bad
and cruel as the last act of this sad tragedy must always appear, there is no
necessity for anticipating things so far, as to say her death was now as much
determined upon as her present detention ;* and after all, we are fully assured
her death is to be assigned more to public, than to any private causes what-
soever : but this remains to be shewn. At present we shall only observe, that
* It is a good remark of the author of Henry the Great and his Court, vol. i. 77. that
" those who produce details after an event, are in the habit of connecting circumstances as if
they had all been purposely foreseen and arranged. It is, however, a known fact, that in the
progress of the most perfect combination, circumstances will always intervene which are merely
the result of chance, and the work of a moment." Mary's flight into England, against the advice
of those who accompanied her, could not be the result of any English combinations.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 469
from the speech above, as well as from some circumstances that took place
before the Commissioners at York and in London, relative to the guilt of Mary,
Elizabeth was rather backward than otherwise to treat her as she was treated.
In a part of the speech already referred to, Sir Ralph absolutely urges the
Queen to consider, that if she proceed " coldly and indifferently shewing
herself indifferent betwixt both parties, as she had hitherto done — it would
inevitably be a great hindrance and prejudice, both to her Majesty, and to
that party which was ready to stand for her Majesty, and the young King of
Scots."
We are not in the least anxious to defend Elizabeth or any of her Counsellors,
beyond what the exact circumstances of the case may warrant ; we are merely
led, in justice to the celebrated subject of this Memoir, and to the extraordinary
Sovereign he served, to ascertain as nearly as we can, what were the exact
causes which from the beginning of Mary's troubles, induced Elizabeth and her
Ministers to pursue the course they did pursue ; at the hazard of bringing no
small disgrace on the country for ages to come — a country which in all
other respects is indebted to them, for the highest degree of glory and renown—
at all events we are desirous of shewing that Lord Burghley was very far from
being exclusively responsible for the part that was taken, though we cannot for
a moment doubt, that he was among those, who regarded Mary as a deadly
enemy to Elizabeth, and to the best interests of his country, and could never
bring himself to trust to such proffered securities as were at different times
propounded for her enlargement.* But that her imprisonment for life in
" There was one great security wanting in all negotiations with Mary ; and that was a security
against her own fixed principles of religion. — Elizabeth will never be forgiven for the disturbances
in Scotland, as an interference with the government of an independent Sovereign — and yet good
policy must have pointed out to her the danger of having Scotland united against her ; but Mary
had always a religious motive at hand for disturbing Elizabeth's government. The following being
a decree of the Council of Lateran, confirmed by that of Trent, so recently concluded, and to the
decrees of which Mary had vowed obedience.
" If temporal governors being required and admonished by the Church, shall neglect to purge
heresy out of the country, let this be signified to the Pope, and from henceforth he may declare
their subjects free from their allegiance, and give away their lands to be possessed by Catholics."
Surely it must be granted, that Elizabeth had not only received but slighted the admonition of
the Pope, and thereby incurred the penalty of disobedience ; and if the Catholics might thereupon
seize the "lands" of her Protestant subjects, it is well known that Mary of all people in the world
must have been judged entitled to seize her crown.
470 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
England, much less her death by the hands of the executioner, as the termination
of such imprisonment, were not thought of, when in the autumn of this year the
several Commissioners met at York, to discuss the charges of the King of Scots '•
party against Mary, and her charges against them, seems very clear from the
following queries, taken from a minute of the Secretary, dated Oct. ] 6, and
sent to the Duke of Norfolk, the Queen's first Commissioner.
" Whether if the Queen (of Scots) be found guilty, she may not be by some
provisions restored to Scotland with surety of her life, and to live either as a
Queen in name only, with her son continuing King ; or as a dowager? And
what kind of sureties may be given by the Earl of Murray and his party to the
Queen's Majesty for observation hereof?
" In what sort may the Duke of Chatelherault be reconciled, to allow of the
government of Scotland in case the Queen be found guilty ? and how may he
be a partaker of the government and drawn from the devotion of France?
" What is the opinion there for the title of the crown of Scotland, if the
Prince should die, and the Queen also without farther issue, to whom it should
come?
" If the Queen remain in England being found guilty, what allowance will
Scotland yield for her maintenance ?
" If the Queen be not found guilty, in what sort may the Prince and his
adherents be assured to live ? and what kind of government shall be thought
meet to either party ? If England should maintain the government of Scotland,
what alliance and aid might England have against the common enemy?"
The first day that the Commissioners met at York was on the 4th of October
1568. The above questions are dated on the 16th, twelve days after, but in the
interim, on the fifth session of the Commissioners, October the 8th, Murray had
expressed a great desire to be certified as to the consequences of their proving the
Queen guilty, it being generally reported in Scotland and at York, that she was
to be " amply, or at least, partially restored by Elizabeth, and it might be to
t/ieir great danger."
In the meanwhile Elizabeth has for nothing been more censured, than for
allowing the rebel Murray to put such preliminary and impertinent questions —
but it seems to be quite forgotten what character Murray really sustained in the
business.— Neither Elizabeth nor her Council had any real right to call him
from the seat of government in Scotland, to answer for what had passed.
Right or wrong, the young King had been crowned, and Murray acknowledged
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 471
as Regent by the three Estates. [See the list of papers delivered to Elizabeth's
Commissioners, Goodall, ii. 87.] He needed indeed the amity and support
of Elizabeth, and both might have been yielded to him, on political grounds,
without further inquiries ; Mary might have been protected and entertained
in England, till things should change in Scotland; but Elizabeth having,
at Mary's request,* required some reason to be assigned by her adve rsaries for
their removal of her, Murray himself came to answer the inquiry, not as a
rebel, but as Regent. Mary called him a rebel, and censured Elizabeth for
admitting him to her presence as such, she herself being excluded ; but the cases
were very different. — Murray was so hated by Elizabeth's Catholic subjects, that
he could scarcely venture so far into the kingdom without danger to himself; Mary
was so popular with them, notwithstanding her imprudences in Scotland, as to be
likely to excite danger to Elizabeth's government wherever she came. And as to
Murray's being allowed to return, while Mary was detained; it was a case of great
hazard to Elizabeth and to England, that as Regent he should be absent from Scot-
land at such a time, while Mary could not be set at large immediately, without
extreme risk to the Protestant governments of both countries. At the request
of the English government, Murray had suspended hostilities with the Queen's
party till the case could be heard in England, but nearly to his ruin, for Mary
having made Argyle and Huntley her lieutenants (and the Duke of Chatelherault,
if he came in time, chief in command), they immediately levied their forces, and
threatening to destroy the Regent and all his party with fire and sword, had
nearly come upon them by surprise, and seized the King. — See letter from
Cecil to Sir Henry Norris, August 27, 1568. Cabala 152. — This may serve to
shew how hazardous it was, for Murray to be absent or off his guard, if he
wished to avoid surprise, after having on his part agreed to a suspension of
hostilities. The inquiries therefore sent to the Duke of Norfolk, and of which
we have spoken, seem clearly to shew, that even if Mary should be proved
guilty, the English government wished to devise means of sending her back out
of England ; or if she should remain in the latter country, to make it the act of
the Scots themselves, by obliging them to provide for her maintenance; or finally,
if found not guilty, then to restore her upon the best conditions and securities
they could devise for the King and his party. All this was natural enough,
and we should say sufficiently impartial, even if Elizabeth were to act as Judge
in the case ; but this could only have been admitted either by Mary, or Murray
* See the commission to the Duke of Norfolk. Earl of Sussex, and Sir R. Sadler. — Goodall, ii. 95.
472 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
as Regent, on the footing of the pretence set up by England, of a feudal
superiority over Scotland,* which was constantly denied. Just before the case
was adjourned from York to London, other queries appear to have been
suggested in a meeting of the Council at Hampton Court, favourable to Mary,
and which probably proceeded from Cecil ; queries being his common mode of
suggesting what might be most proper. Thus in the account of this meeting,
Oct. 30, 1568, present the Lord Keeper, Lord Stuart, Earl of Leicester, the Lord
Admiral, the Lord Chamberlain, Sir William Cecil, and Sir Ralph Sadler, we
find the following queries subjoined.
"1. If the Queen of Scots will not grant commission to have her cause fully
heard, what shall be done ?
" 2. If she will have it heard, whether shall she not personally understand
wherewith she is charged? and if any of the states of the realm, that shall be
* We have had occasion to speak of this claim in our first volume; it was certainly insisted upon
by Elizabeth's Commissioners at York, on this occasion. — See the commission itself, Goodall, 97.
vol. ii. and the protestations of the two Queens, ib. Nos. xxxvii. xxxviii. — Under Henry, Edward,
and Elizabeth, it seems to have been advanced as a counterpoise, to the ancient alliance between
Scotland and France, so much insisted upon by the latter, as a ground for their constant interference
to support Scotland against England. It appears however to have been regarded 'by both parties
as a question in abeyance, at this time, from the following passage in the Duke of Norfolk's letter
to Elizabeth, York 9, 1568. " Whereupon to meet their protestation," (Goodall, No. xxxvii.) " we
thought good to protest again immediately," (No. xxxviii.) "and so we passed over the matter with
them in merry and pleasantspeecb.es, not yielding to their opinion, nor they to ours, touching the
matter contained in our said protestation." — Goodall, ii. 134. It seems to have been a common
case in all treaties to leave such claims unsettled — thus the English claim to the crown of France,
was allowed to continue upon its old footing, in many treaties with that country, and when the
Princess Mary, sister of Henry VIII. was married to Lewis XII. of France, the latter did not
scruple to admit the Fleurs-de-lys, or French arms, into her escutcheon. — See Guillim, and
Heraldic Anomalies, 2d edition. This may be some answer to those, who judge Elizabeth's pretence
to the throne of France to have been a fair excuse for Mary's assumption of the arms and title of
England. The case was quite different, Mary's friends and family considered hers to be a direct
claim against Elizabeth ; the English claim to the French crown, would have been a good one but
for the Safe Law ; so long therefore as that law or custom continued valid in France itself, it was
in vain to insist upon it there; yet it was allowed by the French themselves to have a good
hereditary foundation — and it may almost be questioned whether the claim were not regarded as a
compliment by France, while in compliance with the Salic Law, as a national regulation, it was
considered, as to the actual occupation of the throne, to be a suspended, though a good family
pretension.— At all events the French never insisted in their treaties, upon the relinquishment
even of the title, as Throckmorton noticed, upon Mary's assumption of the English title and arms.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 473
called to hear the matter, shall require to hear herself speak and answer, whether
they shall be thereto permitted ?
" It were meet in this cause to have some form observed of the proceeding,
by some expert person in the civil law."
Whoever penned these queries, with the remark at the end, could scarcely intend
to proceed by any very irregular process.* Though they seem to have been over-
ruled ; at least as to Mary's personal appearance to answer to the charges brought
against her ; it was proposed, instead, to send special Commissioners to her to re-
ceive her answer. — Mary's Commissioners, it should be observed, in their mistress's
name, refused to make any answer, unless she were admitted to the Queen's pre-
sence.— Elizabeth's reply, indorsed by Cecil, may be seen in Haynes, 494, in which
other modes are suggested to Mary, of replying to the charges brought against her.
Another remarkable circumstance is to be gathered from a letter of the Vice-
Chamberlain, Sir Francis Knollys, to the Queen, from Bolton, Jan. 1, 1568-9, in
which he plainly represents to Elizabeth, that he and Lord Scroope, could make
but little impression upon Mary, in persuading her to agree to a proposition they
were directed to lay before her, unless her Majesty would act with somewhat
more decision against her. He concludes his letter thus ;
" And to be plain with your Majesty, it seems that this Queen is half per-
suaded (that is, by her minister the Bishop of Ross), that God hath given you
such temperation of affections, that your Majesty will not openly disgrace her,"!"
nor forcibly maintain my Lord of Murray against her, howsoever she refuse to
yield to your Majesty's conformity." J
Knollys had been commissioned [Haynes, 497,] to make to Mary the following
* Cecil's replies to Murray's proposals to Elizabeth, 22 June, 1568, have in them something
very reasonable, though we shall be told, as usual, that it was all deceit. To his first objection
" They would be loth to enter first into an accusation of the Queen, and then after that to enter into
a qualification;" Cecil answers," The Queen's Majesty never meant to have any to come to make
any accusation of the Queen, but meaning to have some good end to grow betwixt the Queen and
her subjects, was content to hear any thing they had to say for themselves;" and again, "the
Queen's Majesty never meaneth so to deal in the cause, as to proceed to any condemnation of the
Queen of Scots." — And in fact, she did pass no judgment upon the case.
f This deserves attention, as it affords a clue to some part of the proceedings at York.
t From this letter of Sir Francis Knollys, it appears that Mary had at that time the power of
communicating with her uncle the Cardinal of Lorrain ; and of the way in which she passed her
time (that is, literally, of her pastimes, as they were called), at Carlisle and Bolton, a curious account
may be seen in Chalmers and Turner, from Knollys' letters.
VOL. II. 3 P
474 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
proposals. — That in the way of permission* and as of her own will, she should
allow her son to continue in the state wherein he then was, and the regiment in
the Earl of Murray, as already ordered by the Scottish Parliament, and herself
to continue in England, and her son to be brought thither to be educated by
natives of Scotland, and all that had passed to be buried in oblivion. — As to his
own opinion, on the 20th of October, he thus writes to Cecil, inclosing the copy of
a letter he had sent to the Duke of Norfolk. " What is fit for her Majesty to do,
passeth my capacity to give counsell, the circumstances that have passed are so
diverse. All things considered, I see not how her Majesty can with honour and
safety detain this Queen, unless she be utterly disgraced io the world, and that con-
trary party be thoroughly maintained. Again I see not how her Majesty can
safely make a reconciliation, and set her in her seat with the aid of a fixed council
or otherwise, unless all foreign practices may be avoided by an English marriage."
To bring our account of the affairs of Scotland to some conclusion for this year,
we should say, that the arrival of Mary in England, presented to Elizabeth and
her Ministers, one of the most perplexed cases of policy that could possibly have
been conceived. All that went against Mary in Scotland, was favourable to
England; all that had occurred in her favour, on her escape from Lochleven,
unfavourable, not only as far as regarded the enmity between the houses of
Hamilton and Murray, but in regard to the connexion of the former, at so momen-
tous a period, with France. If Mary were to be forced back upon those who had
deposed her, and her life secured by an armed interposition, Elizabeth must have
taken part against her best allies in Scotland, and weakened the Protestant cause ;
while the young Prince, who might and did come to inherit the English throne,
would have been taken out of the hands of the Protestants, who then had him in
* This is sufficient to shew that Elizabeth did not seek, as some have again and again asserted,
to take advantage of Mary's forced resignation of her authority at Lochleven. Mary indeed told
Knollys, that Elizabeth had declared to the Bishop of Ross, that " she would have her a Queen still,
and that Murray should take the execution of the government at the hands of her and of her son
jointly." Though Knollys seemed to doubt the Bishop's report, or at all events to think the Queen
had gone too far if it were true ; we are disposed to think Elizabeth might have so expressed her-
self, and would have been glad if Mary could have been brought to accede to such proposals. — See
Haynes, 498. Every step taken by Elizabeth is so sure to be branded by Mary's advocates, as in
the highest degree deceitful, that we have not dwelt upon the fact of her Minister in Scotland
being forbidden to attend the coronation of James. It certainly does appear from the above letter
of Knollys, compared with the one before cited, that Elizabeth had some reluctance to the open
and utter disgrace of Mary, if it could possibly be avoided.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 475
their power to instruct and educate, and thrown into the hands of Papists, and some
of the greatest foes with whom England had to contend. If Mary were restored to
her own party, France was at hand (not to mention Spain and the Pope) to sup-
port her cause, and assist her in prosecuting her resentments against the Protes-
tants, and against England, as the main support of that party. If her adversaries
brought against \\erfalse charges, and supported them with/org td documents, it
was certainly most atrocious; but from all we have read upon the subject, we are
not prepared to say that this was absolutely and entirely the case ; certainly the
innocence of Mary was not so proved as it might have been,* if she would have
consented to any mode of answering the charges against her, but that which she
knew to be proscribed, namely, a personal interview with Elizabeth. f During
this year, though not at liberty, she was not under any very great restraint ; she
had free communication with her friends in Scotland, her relatives in France,
and with Spain and Rome ; and she had her Minister in England, and a large
retinue of servants and attendants, considering her situation. She was in the
custody of a Peer of the realm, and treated with considerable respect ; indeed
both Lord Scroope and Knollys seem to have been fascinated with her manners,
on their first interview with her after her arrival at Carlisle. " We found her in
her answers," they write to Elizabeth, May 29, 1568, "to have an eloquent
tongue and a discreet head ; and it seemeth by her doings, that she hath stout
courage and liberal heart adjoined thereunto. "J
It is melancholy to think that all Mary's personal accomplishments, only
* The following note of Mr. Turner's, published since the above was written, is too important
to be omitted. — " As I have resolved not to build this history from any doubtful or disputed
materials, I have not used these letters in the construction of my narrative, but it may be right to
add, that after attentively considering all that the Queen's zealous advocates have argued
rather than judged in their favour, I am not induced to depart from the concurring opinions of
Mr. Hume, Dr. Robertson, Lord Hailes, and Malcolm Laing, nor from the much earlier conviction
of the statesmen and general public, both in Scotland and England, at the time of their pro-
duction, that they were the genuine compositions of this Royal Lady : and if genuine, they not
only prove her criminal intimacy with Bothwell, but they also shew that she went to cajole Darnley
to Edinburgh ; and they contain some allusions which incline the mind to believe that she was not
ignorant that Bothwell and Maitland were concerting or preparing for the violent removal of her
husband.1' — Turner's Hist, of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 99.
t See how this is insisted upon in many papers in Goodall's Appendix, and in what terms
Elizabeth's refusal to admit herwas approved, even by the Earls of Northumberland,Westmoreland,
&c. &c. p. 260. No. xcv. See also No. xcvi. and examine xcvii. 264. and No. c. by Cecil, p. 269.
J See some other letters from the same, in the first series of Mr. Ellis's Collection, vol. ii.
476 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
tended to increase the danger of setting her free, in the then state of Christen-
dom, from the difficulty they occasioned of framing any adequate securities, for
the maintenance of the English crown on the head of Elizabeth, and for the
upholding of the cause of Protestantism throughout the whole island of Britain.
We may easily conjecture, how fatal to these several interests, the " eloquent
tongue," the " discreet head" the " stout courage," and the " liberal heart" of
Mary might have been, at the head of any of the parties then opposed to those
interests,* or at the head, perhaps, of all those parties combined, in the bond of
the Holy League. This letter from Lord Scroope and Sir Francis Knollys (May
29, 1569) deserves particular attention. They seem to have been perfectly-
embarrassed as to any advice they could give to Elizabeth ; the detention or
release of Mary, appear to them to have been equally fraught with danger to the
person as well as to the crown of the former. If detained without being con-
victed of conniving at least, at the murder of Darnley, they had already perceived,
that she had such a power of setting forth her own innocence, and blackening
the characters of those opposed to her, that she would soon make friends in the
North of England, where she then was, to the disturbance of that part of the
kingdom ; and if carried more southward, a still more extensive rising in her
favour might be expected, among her Catholic friends and adherents. They
submit to Elizabeth the expedient of leaving it to her own choice, to return to
Scotland, or abide in England; but immediately add their own distrust of the
security of any such expedient, in the following striking terms. (Goodall, ii. 72.)
— " And yet I think it is likely that if she had so her own choice, she would not
go back into her own realm presently, nor until she might look for succours of
men out of France to join with her there, or if she would go presently into her
own country, the worst were, peradventure, with danger enough, she might get
into France ; and that would hardly be done, if my Lord of Murray have a former
inkling of her departure thither ; and on the other side, she cannot be kept so
rigorously as a prisoner with your Highness' honour (in mine opinion), but with
devices of towels or toys at her chamber-window or elsewhere, in the night a
body of her agility and spirit may escape soon, being so near the border ; and
surely to have her carried further into the realm, is the high way to a dangerous
sedition, as I suppose." The danger to be apprehended was not from Mary
individually, but from the strong hold she had upon all Elizabeth's adversaries,
* See Camden, 110. His account of the dangers to be apprehended is very good.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 477
4
whether left to her own choice, or detained against her will, and the moral
certainty there was of her seeking the aid of such adversaries, if not kept under
some restraint ; but the alternative of such restraint was not so free from danger
to Elizabeth, as to be adopted upon any such frivolous motives or feelings, as
are usually ascribed to our English Sovereign. As to the utter disgrace of Mary,
according to Sir F. Knollys' letter, which from the careless manner of expression,
might seem to be suggested, for the mere purpose of supplying a handle or
pretence for her detention, how could it be expected to save Elizabeth's honour,
if recourse were to be had only to forgeries ? In this very letter Knollys calls
the charges against Mary as exhibited at York, " odious accusations," but he does
not pronounce them to be false; on the contrary, he seems to intimate, that there
was no other alternative, than either to suppress them, or bring them forward as
maintainable against Mary — and he speaks of this as the opinion of the Com-
missioners at York, the Duke of Norfolk particularly. It is surprising how
differently the same transactions may be interpreted by different persons. — It
would look in one point of view, as though Elizabeth, so far from wishing utterly
to disgrace Mary, as a plea for her detention, needed to be strongly moved to
do so ; and as there was at first a sort of flushing up of the " odious accusations,"
which were afterwards more openly published, we have almost a right to con-
clude, that her utter degradation was not much countenanced by Elizabeth ; and
only forced upon her by circumstances. England was offered as an asylum to
Mary as an undegraded Queen, upon her voluntary acknowledgment of the
government of her son ; but if she would enter into no such terms, the charges
against her were judged by Knollys and others, to be the only adequate excuses
for not setting her free. Sufficient excuses they could only be after all, upon the
ground of necessity and self-preservation, which as Lord Bolingbroke has said,
are in political as well as other emergencies, the great laws of nature. — Diss.
on Parties, 130. See also p. 128.
Elizabeth was judged so much inferior to Mary, in all the softer and more
elegant accomplishments of the female sex, that many, no doubt, will constantly
and for ever be inclined to wish, that the balance had taken a different turn, but
the historian may not be allowed to look at things in this point of view. Vita
Maria;, Mors Elizabethan ; Vita Elizabeths, Mors Maria; ;* appears to have
* An expression of those times, evidently borrowed from the reply of Clement IV. to Charles
of Anjou, when the latter consulted him as to the unhappy Corradine, nephew of his rival
Manfred. " Vita Corradini, Mors Caroli ; Mors Corradini, Vita Caroli."
478 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
been but too truly the alternative presented to the attention of the politicians on
both sides ; and though nothing of this kind can amount to a satisfactory justifi-
cation in our own days of the steps taken against Mary, yet so many other things
were connected with the life or death of either Queen, at the period in question,
that thither, and thither only,* should we look for a solution of the difficulties of
this great national emergency ; an emergency, aggravated and increased every
succeeding year by Mary's detention, and which could nottherefore be altogether
the effect of mere female jealousy and caprice. The Statesmen of England, at all
events, had much more serious and important objects to attend to.
It was found necessary to look narrowly into the proceedings of the Papists
this year, particularly in Lancashire, and other parts of the diocese of Chester.
The Bishop of that see, requiring some stimulus, as it would appear, to act
against them with sufficient rigour; rather, indeed, to execute more fully and
effectually the Queen's commission ; many appearing to have been encouraged
by his slackness to enter into dangerous associations, for the upholding the
Mass and Popery, in contempt of the Church Service enjoined by authority.
The most suspicious circumstance, however, affecting this class of her Majesty's
subjects, was the disposition manifested by many to correspond with the exiles
at Louvain, which could at this time be regarded as little less than a seminary
of sedition and treasonable practices, against the Queen's crown and person.
Several were detected in transmitting money to the priests there, and in
distributing writings and books against their country, the Queen, and her
government in Church and State. Accounts of these discoveries, and of the
proceedings of the Commissioners in general, were daily transmitted to the
Secretary ; he was about this time, also, much importuned to hasten the
appointment of a new Northern Metropolitan, the see of York being then
vacant ; and the Queen, willing to encourage to the utmost the study of Divinity
in the Universities, as an antidote to the dangerous attempts and increase of the
Papists, caused a letter to be addressed to Sir William, as Chancellor of
Cambridge,! authorizing him to give assurance to the Heads of Colleges,
' See Soames's History of the Reformation, under Henry VIII. vol. i. 399, note 9.
t Strype hits brought both these occurrences together, (1568) and been so far the occasion of
leading us into an error, that we lost the opportunity of noticing the latter event under the proper
year. It seems from some papers published by Mr. Ellis in the 2d series of his Collection of Letters,
to have decidedly belonged to the year 1560, the second year of the Queen's reign.— See vol. ii.
Letters clvii. clviii.— We have to lament that this valu bin publication did not come into our
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 479
Masters and Students there, of her great care of their interests, and of her
intention to prefer none in the Church but such as should be well recommended
to her, by the Bishops or the Universities, through proper testimonials ; which
good purposes and designs on the part of her Majesty, the Chancellor, in his
communications with the University, promised in every way to further and
improve, as occasion might serve. This encouragement given to the Universities,
was of the more importance, at the time, to counteract the proceedings of the
great men and courtiers, who were by no means circumspect in the disposal of
the preferments vested in their hands, bestowing them generally only upon their
needy dependants, without due regard either to their learning or personal
deserts, whereby the study of Theology, for want of proper encouragement,
had been neglected, and much more attention paid to Law and Physic. The
Vice-Chancellor (Dr. Feme's) letter, addressed, " Ornatissimo viro magistro
Gulielmo Cecyllio, reginae majestali prudentissim. Secretario, et academiae
Cantabrigiensi cancellario dignissimo ; " to be seen in the Appendix to the first
vol. of Strype's Annals, No. xxxviii., is admirably calculated to shew the high
sense entertained by the Heads and others, of the University, of the beneficial
effects of her Majesty's care and condescension, as well as the great esteem in
which the Chancellor was constantly held by that learned body ; he being1, in
the following passage of Dr. Feme's letter, associated by name, as it were, with
her Majesty, in the singular benefit conferred on the University : " Id enim summo
reginse TUOQUE beneficio jam accedit Academise, quod nunquam antea sperare
aut expectare quisquam potuit:" — a high compliment, considering his situation,
and that he was in fact contributing, in what he did, to obviate the per-
nicious effects of the more careless and inconsiderate conduct of the great
and powerful amongst the Nobility, and other followers of the Court. Of his
singular merit indeed, in this way, the Vice-Chancellor's letter is a further proof
in the following passage : " Majorem enim spem intuo patricinio, quamunquam
in ullius positam et collocatum habemus."
In the course of this year the Queen appears to have had a very dangerous
illness, and to have suffered much both in body and mind ; which latter circum-
stance is easily to be collected from a remarkable prayer, composed for her, says
hands, before we had ourselves taken copies of the letters that passed between the Grey family
and Lord Burghley, in the years 1563, &c. and that we had not the opportunity of referring, in
its proper place, to the interesting accounts of the death of the Lady Catherine Grey. — Vol. ii. 288.
480 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
Strype,* by Sir John Mason, f a learned man, treasurer of her household, in
which the following passage seems clearly to express, what we have before
observed, and cannot but imply a certain knowledge of her Majesty's perturba-
tions ; "Thou hast now of late, O Lord, for her admonition and correction,
stricken thy said servant, with dangerous sickness and bodily infirmity, even to
the very point of death ; and hast withal abashed her soul with divers troubles
and terrors of mind." This prayer was followed by a thanksgiving on her
recovery, which appears visibly to have undergone the correction of Sir William
Cecil. From what has been advanced on other occasions by the advocates of
Mary, we might expect to have her Majesty's mental sufferings imputed to a
remorse of conscience, for her harsh conduct to the Royal Captive ; but if they
had any thing to do with this unhappy emergency, we should ourselves rather
impute them to a very distressing sense and feeling, of the hard necessity to
which she was driven of acting so harshly against a captive Queen, especially
in support of persons little less than rebels in her eyes.J The case of Mary,
Queen of Scots, we are persuaded, was at this period entirely a political case,
and if Elizabeth appeared to deal hardly with her, it was rather because she
knew not what else to do with her,§ than from any private or womanish pique;
in fact, to get rid of her, as a hated rival, she had scarcely any thing more to do,
than to deliver her up at once to Murray, and her other enraged subjects
of that party, including the Clergy. We fully believe that Elizabeth chiefly
sought a pretence to detain her, to baffle the Hamiltons and French party, and
under a hope of being able to persuade her,|| to let things continue in Scotland
as nominally under the government of her son, but with a Protestant Regency,
dependent in a great measure, if not exclusively, on England.
While these things were in agitation, it is not much to be wondered, that
Elizabeth should be looked to, as a general refuge from the storms that were now
* Annals, vol. i. part ii. 267.
t This could not be, as Sir John died in 1566. See before. •
: Murray was in all instances particularly careful to express his unwillingness to accuse or to
expose Mary, if it could possibly be avoided. " For we remember," says he in his protestation
at Westminster, November 26, 1568, "what person she is whom this matter chiefly touches, the
mother of the King our Sovereign, and to whom, in particular, the most part of us are bound for
benefits received at her hands."— Gooilall, ii. Appendix, No. Ixxiv.
§ See Life of Elizabeth, i. 305, 6, &c.
|| In order to " avoid the great extremities whereunto her cause might bring her." See the
Queen's letter to Sir Francis Knollys, 22d December, 1568. Haynes, 497.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 481
beginning to threaten Protestantism, in the other parts of Europe. It is much
to her credit, and much to the credit of this country, that the persecuted in all
parts, turned to England for succour and support. The Protestant Princes of
Germany, no less than the afflicted Hugonots of France, sought this protection
very particularly ; at the period of which we are treating, the Queen, through
the Prince Palatine of the Rhine, was earnestly solicited to enter into a defen-
sive league with the Protestant confederacy of that country, for defence of the
cause of the Christian religion, against the Pope and his party. She was also
as strongly urged to give aid to the oppressed subjects of the King of Spain in
the Low Countries, and to the French Protestants, cruelly threatened by Charles
IX. under the influence of the Guises. The Low-Country affairs were at this
time indeed in a deplorable state ; Philip II. having delegated his authority to
one of the most tyrannical representatives he could well have selected, the Due
d'Alva; who was nominated by him to supersede the Duchess of Parma in the
course of this year. [See Camden, 1 20.] D'Alva began with appointing what he
chose to call a Council of Tumults, intended to take cognizance of every offence,
which should appear to have been committed against Philip or the strict letter
of his edicts. The persecuted Flemings, with no small reason, denominated this
severe tribunal the Council of Blood, and indeed it turned out to be so ; for though
the Prince of Orange was wise enough to withdraw in time to his governments,
where he turned Protestant, the Counts of Egmont and Horn, still trusting to
the sincerity of Philip's promises, remained with the Court, where they were
soon seized upon, committed to custody, and on the arrival of the new
Governor, speedily executed, the Prince of Orange's estates being at the same
time confiscated. The French Ambassador witnessed the execution of Count
Egmont, and wrote to his Court, that " he had just seen that head struck off,
whose valour had twice made France to tremble ;" alluding to the battles of
St. Quintin and Gravelines. The death of this celebrated man was the signal
for the total revolt of the Netherlanders, who never laid aside their arms till
they had entirely shaken off the detestable Spanish yoke.
Many of the persecuted foreigners, in this wretched state of affairs, came over
to England, and were kindly received, being allowed to settle, and peaceably
pursue their several callings, in the towns and cities of Norwich, Colchester,
Sandwich, Canterbury, Maidstone, Southampton, London, Southwark, and
elsewhere ; with considerable benefit indeed to the nation, through the intro-
duction of various manufactures. — Camden, 119. The Pope issued a Bull
VOL. II. 3 Q
482 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
in resentment of the countenance thus given to the distressed Protestants,
which was nobly answered by Jewel ; the burthen of his argument being
contained in these few words, " Is it become a heinous thing to shew mercy ?"
In such a general resort of persecuted foreigners, it is not to be wondered,
that amongst many good, some of a different character obtruded themselves,
particularly of the sect of Anabaptists ; against these, Grindal, Bishop of
London, exerted himself much, endeavouring all he could, by means of the
Secretary, to get them sent back, and discharged the realm. As far, however,
as protection could, with any safety, be extended to foreign Protestants,
Bishop Grindal was earnest to do it, and to the great praise of the Secretary,
he appears to have been in all instances, the promoter of such measures at
Court, and the person to whom all references upon the subject, were specially
directed ; he saw plainly, however, into the projects that were on foot, for the
extirpation of Protestantism, through the joint agency of the Kings of France
and Spain ; who, though pretending to be jealous of each other, were evidently
confederating for this express purpose ; however desirous, therefore, of main-
taining peace at home, he judged it quite necessary to advise the Queen, to
let the King of France know that she was still interested for the preservation
of the Hugonots, and could not, for her own sake, connive at their ruin ; but
the perplexed state of the Scotch affairs prevented more vigorous measures,
and in the meanwhile, a " dissembled peace," as Camden rightly enough calls
it, was concluded by the French, accompanied with an insidious offer of the
hand of the Due d' Anjou as a husband for Elizabeth, by the Queen Mother,
he being then only a youth of seventeen. This for a time put some stop to
hostile proceedings on the part of England, though the people at large were
uneasy under the outrages committed by the Spaniards upon our merchants
in different parts, and importunate for a war. The Queen indeed sent some
aid to the French Hugonots in money and artillery, and disappointed the Due
d' Alva of a supply of money, by an extraordinary interception of the property
of some Genoese merchants, consigned to the Low Countries, but which had
nearly fallen into the hands of French pirates ; to avoid which, the ships which
were conveying it, happening to seek refuge in the English ports, the money
was taken possession of by the crown, as belonging to the merchants of
Genoa, and security given for it as a loan; it being privately known, that
had it been permitted to find its way to the Netherlands, it would have been
seized upon by the Due d Alva, to help him carry on the war, and further
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 483
oppress Philip's Flemish subjects. The Spanish Mioister earnestly remon-
strated against this seizure, and the Due d' Alva, in retaliation, not only caused
the goods of the English merchants in the Low Countries to be confiscated,
but seized their persons and cast them into prison. England had been already
insulted in the person of her Minister at Madrid, and her West Indian fleet
under Hawkins shamefully assaulted in the Bay of Mexico, which was suffi-
cient to make the English Council wary, and rouse the high spirit of Elizabeth,
who, in resentment of Alva's proceedings, took the same course against the
Flemish merchants and their ships in her ports, to the great discomfiture of
the latter ; for being more numerous than the English on the other side, it gave
a balance in favour of Elizabeth. There is a paper in- Haynes, admirably
calculated to shew the high spirit with which such affronts were at this period
resented on the part of England ; it is copied from a minute of Secretary
Cecil, the four following Latin clauses express a great deal, though the
English is rather stronger, it was presented to the Spanish Ambassador.—
" I. Res est magni momenti subditorum et mercatorum omnium detentio per
armatos homines, et id more bellico ; bona, merces, libri. Quaeritur an hujus-
modi universalis invasio fuerit expresso mandato Regis. II. Regina jam cogitur
commemorare multa prseterita, quse nisi hoc modo provocata nunquam voluerit
comminisci. III. Injuriae aut saltern ingrata officia sibi et suis prsestita.
IV. Legati sui contra jus gentium, violatio ; rejectus, non auditus ; calum-
niatus et accusatus, sed non auditus." The Ambassador was put under restraint,
and in his anger published a book against the Queen, entitled " Amadis Oriana."
— See Camden.
It may appear scarcely necessary to advert, in this place, to an act of Govern
ment, in which the Secretary is supposed to have taken so prominent a part, as
to incur the ridicule of his enemies, and not entirely to have escaped the censure
of his friends ; but as his name is notoriously implicated, we shall just notice it.
We allude to what Sanders, in his book De Schismate Anglicano, calls Cecil's
Fast ; the effect of an order, by royal proclamation, not only to continue such
Romish Fasts, as conduced to the usual consumption of Jish, but even to add
to these a Wednesday's fast, or rather, to make that day also z.jish-day. There
can be little doubt but that the Romish Church system of humiliation and
mortification had been perverted to superstitious purposes, and subjected too
much to the power of the priesthood, in the granting dispensations, or exacting-
penalties for any transgressions. To continue them, therefore, exactly on the
484 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
old footing of religious discipline might seem to savour too much of a leaning
towards the abrogated forms of religion ; and yet, in the then imperfect state of
political economy, it is not much to be wondered that an alarm should be raised,
as to marine interests, — the want of due encouragement, for instance, of a hardy
race of seamen, and adequate support of the navy. It was judged expedient,
therefore, to keep up the Ember- weeks and Fish- days, according to the old
forms, but not exactly with the same designs. To obviate all suspicions of
which, the proclamations issued on the occasion, as well to enforce the observa-
tion of the Wednesday fast as the others, were made to contain the following
clause, that " the same was not required from any liking of Popish ceremonies
heretofore used (which utterly are detested), but only to maintain the mariners
and the navy of this land, by setting men a-fishing." The objects being thus
openly avowed, ought perhaps to have satisfied one party at the least ; but if the
Papists were offended at the slur cast upon their forms and customs, others
seem to have been no less offended at the careless manner in which all regard to
the restraining of appetite, upon spiritual motives, seemed to be set aside.*
This, however, appeal's to be too harsh a construction to put upon it ; fasting
and mortification in general, • were no subjects of these proclamations ; they
seem to have been intended as no more than a civil injunction, to uphold the
fisheries, and through them the navy. It was imprudent, perhaps, to continue
by name the precise fasts of the Romish Church, " Embering and Fish-Days,"
for the mere encouragement of the navy, and a bad time certainly for adding to
them, but the purpose was avowed, and should not therefore have been misre-
presented. We must however observe, in reference to this rather singular trans-
action, that the appointment of the Wednesday fast, if it be right to call it so, took
place about the year 1564, but was by no means well received, so that many dis-
pensations were solicited, and even with the concurrence of the Secretary obtained ;
and indeed by this time it had become so neglected, as to require a fresh pro-
clamation to enforce its observance. That others were attentive to the subject,
as a national concern, may be judged from a memorial or discourse, to be seen
among the Lansdown MSS., by one Edward Jenyns, addressed to Lord Burghley,
and purporting to be on the utility to the realm of observing days for eating
fish only. Lord Burghley, or whoever else was concerned in the measure,
* In the propositions of the celebrated Puritan, Cartwright, in 1570, the twenty-second runs
thus : " Quadragesimatis jejunii observatio, nna cum diei Veneris et Sabbati, turn propter supersti-
tionem, turn aliis de causis, est illicita; quamvis illud politico nomine conentur stabilire."
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 485
should have been better instructed ; even the banter of Erasmus, in his celebrated
Colloquy entitled IyQvo<j>ayia, might have taught him that the best mode to
increase the consumption of fish, would have been rather to abolish the Ember-
weeks and Fish-days, than continue them, according to the fishmongers' humor-
ous argument, who looked to a greater gain from a prohibition to eat fish, than
from the accustomed use of it on particular days : — " Quoniam eo video recidisse
mores hominum, ut quod vetitum sit, impotentius appetant :" — as Collier, however,
vol. ii. 558, has chosen to be very severe upon the form of the order, as putting
a religious duty upon the footing of a mere civil regulation, and that by secular
men, as he calls them ; and as the Papists called it in contempt, as we have ob-
served, Cecil's Fast, we are happy in being able to refer to a letter by the Secretary
himself to the University of Cambridge, in which his notions of the duty of fast-
ing, as a religious exercise, are admirably set forth, equally free from the super-
stition of the Papist, and the fanaticism of other orders of Christians. See
under the year 1580, Strype's Annals, vol. ii. part ii. 287, &c.
At the very close of this year, December 30, 1568, died the celebrated Roger
Ascham, an early acquaintance of the Secretary, and a member of his favourite
college and university, St. John's, Cambridge.* He was certainly a very emi-
nent scholar, though he never rose so high in the world as many of his contem-
poraries and fellow-students. We have spoken of him already, in our first
volume, as tutor to the Princess Elizabeth in the time of Edward VI., secretary
to Sir Richard Morysine, Edward's ambassador to the Emperor Charles V., and
Latin secretary to Edward and Queen Mary;']' a post he also filled under
Elizabeth. That he never rose higher may perhaps be attributed (from the
accounts extant of him), to a want of prudence, if not of decorum, in the con-
duct of his life. He appears to have been fond of amusements, which probably
threw him occasionally into low company, and rendered him negligent of
those manners and accomplishments which might have kept him always in
the higher circles, more to his advantage; for, as an excellent judge has ob-
• That singular writer, Lloyd, gives him the credit of having preserved the Universities from
such robberies as had been committed on the Church ; or, to use his own words, for " hindering
those sacrilegious persons who had dined upon the Church from supping on the Universities.
+ Of his quickness in writing Latin, as well as of his diligence, a remarkable proof is
recorded, in the fact of his having written, at the beginning of the reign of Philip and Mary,
seven-and-forty letters in three days, to persons of such high rank, that the lowest in dignity
was a Cardinal.
48() MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
served, his State of Germany alone, written while he was abroad with Morysine,
and from which we have introduced copious extracts in our first volume, shews
its author to have been a man as capable of shining in the cabinet as in tne
closet. He was about five years older than the Secretary, being born in 1515,
and always well known to the same early academical associates, as Sir John
Cheke, Sir Thomas Smith, &c. &c. : he was also much beholden, at the
beginning of his University studies, to the very same man, Dr. Medcalf, then
head of his college, who befriended Sir William Cecil at the outset of his career
in life. Sir William seems often to have assisted Ascham ;* and when, upon his
death, his widow sought to procure some help at Court, being left in worse cirr
cumstances than she had any reason to expect, as a person of good family and
good fortune, she caused the manuscript of the Schoolmaster to be printed and
dedicated to Sir William, as the friend and patron of her husband ; a compli-
ment, indeed, to which he was the more entitled, from the work having
originated in a learned conversation at which the author had been present, at
the Secretary's house and table, in the year 1563, when the great plague was in
London, and the Court at Windsor. Ascham 's own account of the occurrence
is too curious to be omitted. " On the 10th of December," says he, " it fortuned
that in Sir William Cicell's chamber, her Highness' principal Secretary, there
dined together these personages ; Mr. Secretary himself, Sir William Petre, Sir
John Mason, Dr. Wotton, Sir Richard Sackville, Sir Walter Mildmay, Mr.
Haddon, Mr. John Astely, Mr. Bernard Hampden, M. Nicasius, and I. I was
glad then, and do rejoice yet to remember, that my chance was so happy to be
there that day, in the company of so many good and wise men together, as
hardly then could have been picked out again out of all England besides
Mr. Secretary hath this accustomed manner, though his head be never so full
of most weighty affairs of the realm, yet at dinner time he doth seem to lay
them all aside, and findeth ever fit occasion to talk pleasantly of other matters,
but most gladly of some matter of learning, wherein he will courteously hear
the mind of the meanest at his table. Not long after our sitting down, ' I have
strange news brought me,' saith Mr. Secretary, ' this morning, that divers
* In testimony of his gratitude, he sent Sir William, in 1553, two curious medals, still pre-
served probably in Burghley House : one of Augustus, a god in brass, and Nero, a devil in- gold,
as the donor himself called them, in a Latin letter written to Sir William, from Brussels, July 7,
1553, to be seen in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. i. lib. vi. Mendoza, the Spanish minister,
told Ascham, the brass one alone was a present fit for an Emperor.
1568.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 487
scholars of Eton be run away from the school for fear of beating.' Whereupon
Mr. Secretary took occasion to wish that some more discretion were in many
schoolmasters in using correction, than commonly there is, who many times
punish rather the weakness of nature than the fault of the scholar ; whereby
many scholars that might else prove well, be driven to hate learning before they
know what learning meaneth ; and so are made willing to forsake their book,
and be glad to be put to any other kind of living." Ascham proceeds to give
an account of the opinions of the several other eminent persons present. Sir
William Petre was for the rod ; Wotton, being of a mild nature, agreed with
the Secretary ; Mason blamed (pleasantly) both boys and schoolmasters ; Haddon
joined Petre ; Ascham himself supported Cecil ; Sir Walter Mildmay and Mr.
Astely said little, and Sir Richard Sackville nothing at all. He then goes on to
say, " After dinner, I went up to read with the Queen's Majesty ; we read thep
together in the Greek tongue, as I well remember, that noble oration of Demos-
thenes against jEschines, for his false dealing in his ambassage to King Philip of
Macedcm. Sir Richard Sackville came up soon after, and finding me in her
Majesties privy-chamber, he took me by the hand, and carrying me to a window,
said, ' Mr. Ascham, I would not for a good deal of money have been this day
absent from dinner, where, though I said nothing, I gave as good ear, and do
consider as well the talk that passed, as any one did there. Mr. Secretary said
very wisely, and most truly, that many young wits be driven to hate learning
before they know what learning is. I can be good witness to this myself: for
a fond schoolmaster, before I was fully fourteen years old, drave me so, with fear
of beating, from all love of learning, as now, when I know what difference it is to
have learning, and to have little or none at all, I feel it my greatest grief, and find
it my greatest hurt that ever came to me, that it was my so ill chance to light
upon so harsh a schoolmaster. But seeing it is but in vain to lament things
past, and also wisdom to look to things to come, surely, God willing, if God
lend me life, I will make this my mishap some occasion of good hap to little
Robert Sackville, my son's son, for whose bringing up I would gladly, if it so
please you, use specially your good advice. I hear say you have a son much of
his age ; we will deal thus together : point you out a schoolmaster, who by your
order shall teach my son and yours, and for all the rest I will provide, yea though
they three do cost me 200 pounds by the year ; and besides you shall find me as
fast a friend to you and yours as perchance any you have." Which promise,
says Ascham, the worthy gentleman surely kept with me until his dying day.
488 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1568.
Upon Sir Richard's further discourse on the subject, Ascham undertook to write
upon the subject, and prepared his curious Treatise of the Schoolmaster : but Sir
Richard died before it was finished, and the work would have been lost but for
the care of Sir William Cecil, of whom Ascham thus speaks : " God, the mover
of goodness, prosper always him and his, as he hath many times comforted me
and mine ; and I trust to God shall comfort more and more, of whom most justly
I may say, and very oft and always gladly I am wont to say, that sweet verse of
Sophocles, spoken by Oedipus to worthy Theseus, E^w yap a'yw &a ae K'OVK aXXov
Bporwv :" and indeed Sir William befriended his family, as well as himself,
putting his eldest son to St. John's College, and procuring for him a fellowship
there.
The Queen's Progresses, 1568, collected from Lord Burghley's Diary are as
follow :
"July 4. The Queen's Majesty at Greenwych.
" July 6. At Howard Place in London. [The Charter House, residence of the
Duke of Norfolk.]
" 14, 15. At Havering.
" 19. At Copt Hall." [The seat of Sir Thomas Heneage.]
In this Progress the Queen also visited Giddy Hall, the seat of Sir Anthony
Cook, father of Lady Cecil.
" July 25. At Enfield. [Belonging to the Queen. See a long account of it
in Nichols, vol. i. 101.]
-30. At Hatfield. [Where the Queen formerly resided.]
" August — At St. Albans.
" At Whaddon. [The seat of Lord Grey de Wilton.]
" At Eston. [The seat of the Earl of Pomfret]
" The Queen's Majesty was at Grafton in Progress.
" At Bycester.
"At Rycot. [The seat of Mr. Norrice, (qy. Norreys?) commonly
called ' Master Norrice.' See Nichols, i. 250.]
" At Newbury.
" At Reading."
CHAP. X.
1569.
Eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, commenced November 17, 1568.
Extract from Lord Burghley's Life, by a Domestic, containing the account of a Con-
spiracy against him, when Master of the Wards — Rapin's account of the same Conspiracy
— Camden — Of the Queen's conduct in it — Extract from Stn/pe's Life of Archbishop
Parker, relating to Cecil — Names of persons concerned in the Conspiracy — Of Lord
Pembroke — Letters from the Earl of Sussex to Cecil — Of Leicester — Prayer in favour of
the Queen's Marriage with the Archduke, attributed to Cecil — Of Cecil's Views with
regard to the Succession — Extract from Hallam, on the Conspiracy — Passage from Lord
Burghley's Life, by a Domestic, with the account of a Papist's attempt to Assassinate him —
Rebellion in the North — Outrages on the Churches, $c. — The Priest Morton — Sir Thomas
Smith's Pamphlet — Book attributed to Cecil by Strype — Illness of Cecil ; his Letters to
Sir R. Sadler — Young Earl of Rutland — Duke of Noifolk — Memorial In/ Cecil, under
the title of Perils and Remedies — Knox's Letter to Wood — Passage from Rapin con-
cerning Mary — Memorable Speech of Elizabeth, reported by Bishop Jewel — Montanus'
History of the Spanish Inquisition published — Rodo/phus Cavaf/eriits — Theodore Wierus'
Letter to Cecil — Cecil's Letter to Signor Bertano — -Kil/cgrew's Letters to Cecil — Elizabeth
excommunicated — Duke of Aha — Mary's Charges against Elizabeth and Cecil— Extract
from Strype concerning Mary — Her Letter to Elizabeth from Tittbury Castle — Sir Walter
Mildmay's Opinion, in Bur net — Mr. White's Account of Mary at Bo/ton — Lord
Hunsdon's Letter — Lord Shrewsbury's Account of Mary's expenses — -Letter from Cecil
to Lord Shrewsbury — Letter from Lord Leicester to the Earl of Sussex — Sir N. Tlirock-
morton's Conversation ivith the Earl of Lennox — Henry Carey sent to the Regent of
Scotland with Inquiries — Letter from Lords Huntingdon and Hereford to Cecil— Bishop
of Ross— Admiral Coltgni — Puritans — Christopher Foster's Letter — Dr. Whit gift--
Disturbances at Cambridge — Cecil appealed to in all cases — Death of Bishop Boner —
Dr. Story — Douay Collegefounded — Colleges at Rome — Persons — First Public Lottery.
THE Ninth Chapter of Lord Burghley's Life, by a Domestic, relates so entirely;
with the exception of one section only, to the transactions of this year, that we
might reasonably transcribe it at length ; if so succinct an account of the most
VOL. II. 3 R
490 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
important affairs could answer all our purposes. It begins with the appointment
of the Secretary to be Master of the Wards in the room of Sir Thomas Parry,
which took place in the month of January, 1561, and of which we have already
spoken under that year. It next proceeds to notice the Rebellion in the North,
of which more will be to be said hereafter ; but as the writer of the Life takes
occasion to make this rebellion an introduction to a catastrophe, which befel Sir
William early in the year we are entering upon, we shall copy his words,
following Mr. Peck's edition of the work :—
" At the time of which accident (himself being Secretary alone, and thereby
all dispatches passing his hands) he tooke so intolerable paines and care, and
gave so provident counsel!, as matters weare so quickly expedited, and politequely
carried, that the rebells weare soon suppressed, without bataile, blood, or danger ;
to the honor of the Quene and weale of the realm. „
"Thus happiely beginning, he constantlie contynued his course, as hath been
seen, to the good of Prince, People, and Contrie ; and to his own immortal
praise and worthy reputation, with such wisdome and moderation as was worthy
a man of his place, all the time of his service, as Secretarie, carrieing himself
so strangelie tempered, almost above the nature of a man, as he was never seen
to be angrie ; but on the contrary, most patient in hearing, and ready in
dispatching ; still continuynge constant in his business, and withal], so courteous
and affable, as no man went from him discontented or discouraged ; which made
him loved, feared, and honored !
" In the time of which [his last] fortunate risinge, * you must indeed imagine
that the harts of many did also rise against his fortune ; who weare more hot in
envieing him, than able to follow him : detracting his praises, disgracing his
services, and plotting his danger.
" As particularly on a time I heard him tell, that a book, pestilentlie and
passionately penned, against the nobility, came to his hands, and was seen on
his table, by a great nobleman, a counsellor, which book he had read with great
dislike, noting many notable lies and faults of the writer.
" Yet there was a formall tale told to the Lords of the Counsell, (who then
weare most of them great noblemen) and to divers others of the nobilitie,
inferring and inforcinge it to be done, or procured by himself, to disgrace the
nobilitie.
* Viz. — his promotion to be Master of the Wards.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 491
" Whereupon such a fire was kindled against him, in the parts of all the
lordes, as a plot was laid to cut him off.
" He was thereupon called before the Counsel!, without the Quene's knowledge,
and charged with it.
" Which though he sufficiently aunswered, yet it was resolved [before that]
what aunswer so ever he made he should be sent to the Tower ; and then they
would find matter enough against him.
" Whereof having advertisement, he wrote to the Quene of their purpose, who
commanded, that nothing should be done against him, without her privitie, or
els he had byn sent to the Toure without her knowledge.
" So the fire was covered, but not quenched ; for not long after, a villain was
hired to kill him, and set at a stairs foot to dispatch him, as he came from the
Quene, but, being warned of it, he went down another way, and so escaped
death.
" Here maie be noted how great mischiefs may rise upon small causes- ! for all
this was only for havinge the booke, which he detested and condemned as much
as they ; and sought to have the writer apprehended ; as belonged to his place.
Yet his jealous enemies would have turned his honest meaninge to a horrible
mischiefe."
Of this conspiracy against the Secretary, the particulars of which, in
many instances, are similar to the case of his friend Cranmer, in the reign of
Henry VIII., various accounts are to be met with in different authors. Rapin's
statement of matters is perhaps as full and as circumstantial as any, though it
may be doubted whether he is quite right in the motives he assigns, for the
resentment shewn — we mean with respect to Cecil's preference of the House of
Suffolk, as the presumptive heirs to the throne, in disparagement of the Scottish
claims. This does not seem quite clear : in all other respects his history of the
transaction may deserve to be transcribed ; it is as follows :
" Among all Elizabeth's ministers and counsellors, there was not one so heartily
attached to his Mistress's interest as CECIL, who was Secretary of State ; all the
rest had their private views, to which they strove to adapt the Queen's, and the
nation's interest ; but Cecil minded only the Queen's, and was in great favour
with her. Therefore to him chiefly she imparted her most secret thoughts with
respect to the government of the State. Several Privy Counsellors were engaged
in the Queen of Scots' party ; that is, they wished the crown of England were
secured to her, in case Elizabeth died without issue. They were of opinion it
492 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
was a thing agreeable to equity, justice, and the laws of the land ; and pretended
it was the only way to prevent the troubles which might happen after the Queen's
decease ; but Elizabeth thought that when they considered the public advantages,
they did not sufficiently attend to her safety. Mary did not pretend only to be
Elizabeth's presumptive heir : it was well known her pretensions reached much
further, and that many were persuaded her title was preferable to the Queen's.
If, therefore, she was appointed Elizabeth's successor, it could be only in virtue
of her birthright, and not in consequence of Henry's will, in which she was not so
much as named, whereas many thought Elizabeth derived her title solely from
thence. So, in taking this course, the titles of the two Queens would have been
put in opposition, very much to Elizabeth's disadvantage ; consequently, her
fear was, this nomination would increase the number of Mary's friends, and in
the end endeavours would be used to set her on the throne before the time
appointed. All who were displeased with the Government, thought the nation
would get by the change. The Catholics heartily wished it, and amongst the
Protestants themselves there were many to whom it was indifferent which Queen
was on the throne, because they made no great conscience of conforming to all
the changes which might be made in religion, as was the case more than once.
It was therefore of great moment to hinder Mary from being nominated to
succeed her. So, she could not but have equal regard for those, whom she saw
sincerely attached to her private interests. Among these, Cecil was the chief,
and t was he, also, whom Mary's friends considered as her most dangerous
enemy, and the rather as he had frequently shewn his inclination to the house
of Suffolk, before the death of the Duchess of that name. This was the real
motive of a plot laid in the beginning of the year 15G9, to ruin that Minister.
The Duke of Norfolk, the Marquis of Winchester, the Earls of Pembroke,
Northumberland, Westmoreland, Arundel, Leicester, and others, entered into
this sort of conspiracy. They accused Cecil of being the cause of the Queen's
detaining the Spanish money, and by that, of running a manifest risk of a war
with Spain, which could not but be very prejudicial to trade. They flattered
themselves that upon this charge the Queen would send the Secretary to prison,
and then they made no question they should find ways enough to effect his ruin.
But the Queen being too quick-sighted not to see their aim, and the motive of
their plot, commanded them silence in such a manner, as destroyed all their
hopes of success, either then or for the future."
Camden's account is much the same ; only he attributes to Throckmorton,
1569'J MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 493
(Cecil's "Emulator," as he calls him), the suggestion of sending him to
the lower, for ,f he were but once imprisoned, means to "undo him" it
was observed, "would not be far to seek." "But the Queen (by whose
know not), came to the knowledge hereof in good time
Cecil, through the magnanimous fortitude of his Princess (who coming
upon them in the very instant of time, restrained them by her beck) and
easily defeated the plot that was raised against him.* And withall she
broke the neck of another more secret design of theirs, openly to proclaim
Queen of Scots undoubted heir of England, if every thing should
fall out other than well to Queen Elizabeth, and this in opposition to a book
sent abroad in favour of the title of Suffolk." In which passage Camden
appears ignorant of the means by which the Queen came to the knowledge of
the plot, but if the author of the Life by a Domestic be right, Cecil himself
wrote to acquaint her with it. The prompt and decisive step she took to save her
faithful servant on this occasion from disgrace, and perhaps destruction, exceed-
ingly resembles, as we. have before hinted, the mode by which her father
opportunely interposed to save Cranmer, from a conspiracy of a like nature, his
enemies having exactly in the same manner, calculated upon sending him 'first
to prison, and then bringing forward their accusations, against a disgraced and
helpless rival. We have, in Strype s Life of Archbishop Parka-, the winding
up, as it were, of this unsuccessful endeavour to destroy the credit of this great
Minister. "I end this year," (1 569) says he, "with the emergence of an
excellent man, Secretary Cecil, out of a very great danger of disgrace, if not
of death ; most of the great men about the Queen combining to bring her into
displeasure with him. He was the Archbishop's chief and fast friend, and to
whom he constantly made his applications on "all occasions, and so did all the
rest of the good Bishops in their affairs and necessities, so that on his safety
* In the Memoirs of the Life and Administration of William Cecil, Baron Burleigh, 1738, it is
said of him, " That such was his loyalty, that it would bear no aspersions ; for his regard for the
royal family was so well known and attested, that though he was" accused to all the Princes under
whom he lived, they not only discredited his enemies, but refused to hoar them ;" p. 19, 20.— The
same writer enters rather largely into the nature of this conspiracy, and takes the opportunity of
giving a short account of the several Lords of the Council concerned in it, distinguishing between
the workers of it, and those who were wrought upon to join in it. Leicester being generally allowed
to be at the head of the former, among the most respectable of his dupes, he justly ranks 'the
Duke of Norfolk ; pp. 43—47.
494 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
and credit with the Queen, the Church's welfare in great measure depended.
In what strength and security this great, patron and friend of the Archbishop
and hierarchy now again stood, after a desperate shock, I had rather express in
his own words than mine, writing thus to a friend of his : " I am in quietness
of mind, as feeling the nearness and readiness of God's favour to assist me
with his grace, to have a disposition to serve him, before the world, and
therein have I lately proved his mere goodness to preserve me from some clouds
or mists ; in the midst whereof I trust mine honest actions are proved to have
been lightsome and clear. And to make this rule more proper and special
to be applied, I find the Queen's Majesty, my gracious good lady, without
change of any part of her old good meaning towards me, and so I trust only
by God's goodness to observe the continuance. I am also presently moved to
believe, that all my Lords, from the greatest to the meanest, think my actions
honest and painful, and do profess inwardly to bear me as much good-will as
ever they did heretofore."*
Rapin, in the passage above cited, has given so good an account of the
reasons, which withheld Elizabeth from declaring Mary to be her heir, that we
entirely incline to think, that without being the decided enemy of that unfor-
tunate Princess, Cecil, as a truly honest Counsellor, could have given his
Sovereign no better advice, and that those who endeavoured at this time to
alienate her affections from him, were only seeking, as the same author observes,
to further their own private views, regardless of Elizabeth's safety. The names
alone of those who are particularly said to have conspired against him on this
* It is somewhat remarkable, but seems to confirm the Secretary's remark above, that Lord
Pembroke, who died this year, made (by a special codicil to his will) Sir William one of his Exe-
cutors, or Overseers of his Will, with a bequest of 501. in money, plate, or jewels. — See Collins's
Peerage, ii. 18. It is also singular that in this appointment Sir William should have been asso-
ciated with others of the confederates against him, as the Earl of Leicester and Sir Nicholas
Throckmorton. The variance between the Duke of Norfolk and the Secretary seems also to have
been soon settled, as appears by two letters from the Earl of Sussex to the latter, printed by Lodge;
in the first of which, dated May 15, 1569, his Lordship sorely laments the breach between two
persons he so highly esteemed, recommends a speedy reconcilement, offering himself as a mediator,
if a third person should be wanting. In the second letter, dated early in June, the Earl congratu-
lates Sir William on a reconcilement having taken place, between two persons, " whom," he says,
" the world hath always judged to be void of private motives, and to respect only the Queen and
her realm in all their actions." — He attributes all that had passed to the officiousness and misre-
presentations of false friends.
1569.]
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
495
occasion, are sufficient to prove this. The Duke of Norfolk had been cajoled
by the Regent of Scotland, Maitland, and others (particular Leicester), into a
prospect of espousing the unhappy Queen of Scots ; the Marquis of Winchester,
was by his own account a mere "bending willow," ready for any new impulse
that might arise, and decidedly one of those so well described by Rapin, who
would make "no great conscience of conforming to all the changes which
might be made in religion." The Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland
were soon after in open rebellion, and, as well as Arundel and Pembroke, were
Catholics ; and of Leicester, little more need be said, than that Cecil was no man
to further his purposes, as regarded either of the two Queens ; fbr he had indis-
putably a view to both, as things might turn out. In 1564, Camden asserts, as
we have before shewn, that he was wooing the Queen of Scots " with all the
offices he could, labouring to win her favour;" and yet in 156C* we find him
almost an avowed competitor with the Archduke Charles for the hand of
Elizabeth, on which occasion, indeed, the honest interposition of Cecil might
well be expected to excite an irreconcileable resentment, however outward
appearances might occasionally be assumed to the contrary ; for to him is
ascribed, and probably with sufficient truth, the following paper in favour of
the Queen's marriage with the Archduke, and against the pretensions of
Leicester; it is too curious to be omitted, especially, if, as a learned author well
observes, " it was actually laid before the Queen, it shews the plainness and
freedom which this great statesman ventured to use towards her."
De Matrimonio Regince Angllce cum extero Principe, April, 1566.
Reasons to move the Queen to accept Charles.
Besides his person, his birth, his alliance.
I. She shall not diminish the honour of a
Prince, to match with a Prince.
II. When she shall receive messages from
Kings, her husband shall have of himself by
birth a countenance to receive them.
III. Whatsoever he shall bring into the
realm, he shall spend here in the realm.
IV. He shall have no regard to any person
but to please the Queen.
V. He shall have no opportunity nor occa-
sion to tempt him to seek the Crown after the
Reasons against the Earl of L.
I. Nothing is increased by marriage of him
either in riches, estimation, or power.
II. It will be thought that the slanderous
speeches of the Queen with the Earl have
been true.
III. He shall study nothing but to enhance
his own particular friends to wealth, to offices,
to lands, and to offend others.
Here follow 19 particular names of persons
to be so served, which it is unnecessary to
repeat.
496 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURHGLEY. [1569.
Queen, because he is a stranger, and hath no IV. He is infamed by the death of his wife,
friends' in the realm to assist him. V. He is far in dett.
VI. By marriage with him the Queen shall VI. He is like to prove unkind or jealous
have the friendship of K. Philip, which is ne- of the Queen's Majesty.
cessary, considering the likelihood of falling
out with France.
VII. No Prince of England ever remained
without good amity with the House of Bur-
gundy; and no Prince had ever less alliance
than the Queen of England hath ; nor any
Prince ever had more cause to have friendship
and power to assist her estate.
VIII. The French King will keep Calais
against his pact.
IX. The Queen of Scots pretendeth title to
the crown of England, and so did never fo-
reign Prince since, the Conquest.
X. The Pope also and all his parties are
watching adversaries to the crown.
I have inserted the whole of both statements, to shew what Cecil's real views
seem to have been with regard to the succession, and which many have regarded
as a studiously concealed mystery.
He could not possibly wish, for the good of the nation, to have Mary succeed.
Not only her own religious principles must have prevented this, but he must
have known and felt, that according to the last clause of the foregoing paper,
it could only have led to a revival of the influence of " the Pope and all his
parties," as it is admirably expressed. If he inclined to the Suffolk line, the cause
of Protestantism might be one motive ; their title under Henry's will having a
parliamentary sanction, another; and a third, perhaps, the affinity which the Grey
family in their letters, as I have before noticed, seem constantly to have acknow-
ledged. If, however, he had any inclinations of this description, they seem to have
been quite overruled by his desire that the Queen should marry some foreign
Prince of high connexions, to increase her alliances, interrupt the competition of
dangerous rivals, thwart the views of Leicester, give hope of a regular succession^
and maintain her dignity. And this he seems honestly to have laid before her,
at the hazard of exactly such jealousies and enmities, as, at the commencement
of this year, were excited against him, but which, as it happened, turned out highly
to his honour and advantage. Mr. Hallam, in the first volume of his Constitu-
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 497
tional History of England, appears to take so just a view of this conspiracy,
that I shall conclude my remarks upon it with his able note, p. 138.
" Camden ascribes the powerful coalition formed against him (Cecil), in 1569,
wherein Norfolk and Leicester were combined with all the Catholic Peers, to
his predilection for the House of Suffolk : but it was more likely to be owing
to their knowledge of his integrity and attachment to his Sovereign, which
would steadfastly oppose their wicked design of bringing about Norfolk's
marriage with Mary, as well as to their jealousy of his influence. Carte reports,
on the authority of the dispatches of Fenelon, the French ambassador, that they
intended to bring him to account for breaking off the ancient league with the
House of Burgundy, or, in other words, for maintaining the Protestant interest."
A Papist writer, under the name of Andreas Philopater, gives an account of
this confederacy against Cecil at some length. Norfolk and Leicester belonged
to it, and the object was to defeat the Suffolk succession, which Cecil and Bacon
favoured. Leicester betrayed his associates to the Queen. It had been intended
that Norfolk should accuse the two Counsellors before the Lords, " ea ratione
ut e senatu regiaque abreptos ad curias januas in crucem agi prseciperet, eoque
perfecto recte deinceps ad forum progressus explicaret populo turn hujus facti
rationem, turn successionis etiam regnandi legitimam seriem, si quid forte reginse
humanitus acciderit."
Having given an account of this singular confederacy, designed to ruin for
ever the credit of the Secretary with his Sovereign, I shall return to the narrative
of his Domestic, who relates a circumstance still more alarming, which seems
to have occurred to him about the same time. I shall still follow Mr. Peck's
edition of the work, discarding the ancient spelling.
" Likewise as he had some foes at home, so he also wanted not enemies
abroad ; for another time a Popish practiser and traitorous villain was by some
seminaries persuaded to kill him; and being 'with him alone in his chamber,
standing behind him, leaning on his chair, had not the power to perform his
villany, though when he came in he took his dagger ready in his hand to do it.
So here you see, though his wisdom were a worker, yet only God was his
upholder, and the steps to honour are much pains and more danger ; the highest
rising being ever subject to the lowest falling. But in despite of envy, danger,
and death, he held on his high way as by a strait line, forgetting and forgiving
injuries, truly performing his service to his Prince and his country.
" And though at that time, in the beginning of the alteration of religion, and
VOL. ii. 3 s
498 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
settling a new form of government in the state, it may be imagined what wars
were threatened and put in execution, what secret plots and practices were set
on foot both at home and abroad, what wants were to be supplied, what division
was then among the Council, and what doubts among the people, were then on
foot ; wherein himself being the principal actor, took so painful care, and gave
so careful counsel, as with his discreet and politic temperance and providence
the government was wrought and brought to so good order and peaceable state,
as hath forty years been seen and tasted in England, though seldom found or
read of in other nations."
This is certainly an account which history in all respects confirms. The
changes in religion and government, the actual and menaced wars, the secret
plots and practices at home and abroad, the urgent wants to be supplied to
give surety to the kingdom, the divisions in the Council, and fluctuating doubts
and discordant sentiments of the populace, were enough to try the patience of
any Minister, and greatly embarrass any less prudent, sagacious, and collected
Statesman than the illustrious subject of this Memoir, who had constantly in
view the preservation of his Sovereign, the independence and glory of England,
the firm establishment of the English Protestant Church, without too great a
departure from the primitive system of doctrine and discipline, to gratify the
wishes, demands, and expectations of other seceders from the Church of Rome ;
— the Episcopal Hierarchy being a fair and justifiable balance between the
discarded Romanists and the too intruding Calvinists of the Geneva school.
The Life by a Domestic distinguishes this year, properly enough, by the
rebellion in the North ; I shall therefore now proceed to give some account of
this threatened revolution. — It happened indeed towards the close of the year,
but is of sufficient importance to take the lead of other transactions. — The heads
of this rebellion, were the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, two of
the Noblemen, who, as has been before shewn, were parties to the confederacy
against the Secretary. The avowed object of this insurrection, was in behalf of
the true succession, that is, in fact, in behalf of the Queen of Scots,* nor was it
dissembled that they wished to have the old religion restored. Their public
declarations, as communicated by the Dean of York to Grindal, Bishop of
* " Whom the world beholdeth to be the principal hidden cause of these troubles." These
words appear in the Queen's letters to Lord Shrewsbury at the time ; and it was as much Mary's
misfortune, as her fault to be so. Where she did not act herself, others would act for her, and not
always so much for her, as against Elizabeth and the Protestant Church.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 499
London, are to be seen in Strype's Annals, 1569. The Secretary, seems, in
those declarations (in which it must be observed, the Duke of Norfolk, and
the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, are associated); to be particularly
aimed at, in the denunciation of certain " common enemies of the realm about
the Queen's person, by whose sinister and detestable counsel and practice,"
the lives and liberties of the insurgents and their party, were said to be
endangered. This part of their declaration, however, was admirably answered
in a pamphlet ascribed to Sir Thomas Smith, and addressed to the rebels.
" Sooth, many disordered and evil-disposed persons about the Queen have
marred all ; is there a greater disorder than rebellion ? Is there any worse dis-
position than treason ? Is there any greater falsehood than thus to deform the
Queen's most noble government? Are you so blind as not to seethe Queen touched,
though to beguile you, her name be spared ? Come they whom you call disordered,
to the Queen uncalled ? Are they not of her Council by her wise and good choice?
Deal they not in the causes of the realm, to such ends and with such means as
her Majesty appointeth ? Do they any thing without her authority and good
liking, as there is good cause? Make they any laws ? Require they any subsidies?
Do they the greatest things without the assent of the whole realm ? Your own
assent by your deputies and burgesses in open Parliament, whereunto her Majesty's
assent is had? Or in causes out of Parliament, is aught put in execution without
her Highness's will and pleasure ? Cease then to be so beguiled." Again, " But
what have these disordered, and evil-disposed persons about the Queen done ?
They have overcome true religion, say your seducers and false teachers. — Is there
any alteration of religion received from any other than from the word of God
himself? Do they mean you well that take God's word from you ? That destroy
the Bible ? Tear and tread under foot the Scripture of the word of God ? Can
they wish you to see, that would take away your light ? This path is not the
way to true religion, but to error ; which they would not have you see, that
persuade you to blindfold yourselves against the truth of God's Gospel.
" For sound religion receive it, as God has taught it — read his word : and for
the delivery and explication of it, it behoveth you, being no better clerks than
you are, to credit the whole parliament, the learned clergy of the realm, and
those that teach you by the word of God. And learn it in such sort and place
as it is to be taught — your Churches as they were reformed : the word of God
read in such tongue as you understand. The Sacraments ministered to your
comfort in such sort as you might feel the sense of them, and be edified by them.
500 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
The good example of your ministers living in holy matrimony with their own
wives, and abstaining from yours, and teaching you obedience, justice, and
charity ; these be the means to learn truth."
No long deliberation seemed to be necessary to induce the Queen's Council
to proclaim the two leading Earls (Northumberland and Westmoreland, both
needy and unwise personages, though bearing the high names of Percy and
Neville) to be traitors ;* and the Secretary, as Chancellor of the University of
Cambridge, apprehending, that many of the young students connected with the
northern parts of England, might be misled by false rumours, and depart the
University and repair to their friends, took especial care by a letter to the Vice
Chancellor, to have all things kept quiet there ; foreseeing probably, a speedy
termination to so rash a movement :| and indeed it was soon quelled, though
probably designed and fostered by Popish emissaries, immediately connected
with Rome,J described in a homily, then put forth, as the Pope's " disguised
chaplains, creeping in laymen's apparel into men's houses, and as blind guides
leading the blind, bringing or driving the Queen's weak subjects into the ditch
of horrible rebellion." Great outrages were committed against the Churches, and
the Bibles and Prayer-books found therein, which the rebels cut and tore and
trampled under their feet ; having for an ensign, or standard, a plough, thejfoe
wounds of Christ, and a cross. They were to be assisted by parties from Scotland
devoted to Mary, and by the Duke of Alva from Flanders; and, as Camden
relates, they were principally instigated to engage in these treasonable practices,
* This appears to have taken place about the 26th or 27th of November, from a letter of Sir
William's to Sir Ralph Sadler. — State Papers, £fc. vol. ii. 40.
f Strypc is disposed to attribute to the Secretary also a notable book, as he calls it, addressed
to the rebels soon after the rebellion was quelled, being a warning against the dangerous practices
of the Papists, and especially the partners of the late rebellion. His reason for thinking it to be
written by Sir William, is, because, as he says, " he commonly framed occasional discourses upon
more eminent occurrences of state, and did as much by his writing as by his counsel." Several
strong passages from this work, are to be seen in Strype, and to which we must be content to
refer, only observing that some passages so directly relate to great public incidents, falling under
the particular notice and observation of Sir William, that it seems quite reasonable to suppose he
at least had a hand in it. if he were not altogether the author of it.
+ See, in proof of this, the Bishop of Ross's confessions in Murdin, under f. 1571, particularly
p. 60. These confessions should be carefully looked to for a proper understanding of the Northern
Rebellion, its maintainers, and its extent.— In fact, as the Duke of Alva had been treated with to
send over a foreign force, the principal object could not be mistaken.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 591
by a Popish Priest, of the name of Morton* expressly sent by the Bishop of
Rome, [see Murdin, p. 60.] to pronounce Queen Elizabeth to be a heretic, and
thereby to have incurred a forfeiture of all her dominion and power. Whatever
help and support they expected to receive, would appear to have totally failed
them ; many of the Nobility who were solicited to join them, sent the letters to
the Queen ; the Duke of Norfolk himself being one of those who did so.f In
a very short time, they discovered the error they had committed, and both
the Earls, passing the borders, sought refuge in Scotland. The Earl of West-
moreland was so fortunate afterwards, as to find means to get into Flanders, to
the preservation of his life, but only to pass his days in comparative poverty and
distress, a miserable pensioner of the King of Spain, while the Earl of Northum-
berland, had the misfortune to be delivered up into the hands of government and
finally executed. J
* For a further account of Morton, and the part he bore in this and other conspiracies
against the Queen, see Strypes Annals, ch. xxxvi. under the year 1575, and Turner's Reio-n of
Queen Elizabeth, vol. ii. ch. xxvii.
t For a specimen of the letters sent, and of the rebels' protestation, see Haynes, 563, 4, 5.
These were forwarded to the Court by the Earl of Derby. The Duke of Norfolk's vindication of
himself may be found at p. 56? ; Lord Pembroke's, 568 ; and Lord Arundell's, 569. There is an
admirable state paper upon this rebellion to be seen at p. 555.
I At the time of this rebellion the Secretary appears to have laboured under a severe illness,
so severe as to confine him to his bed ; from which he wrote to Sir Ralph Sadler on the 20th of
November, to recommend to his care the young Earl of Rutland, who at the early age of thirteen
was allowed by the Queen to join the army against the rebels; rather to give countenance to his
tenants, than engage in much service. He was of high blood and not very distantly related to the
throne, as Cecil himself informed Sir Francis Walsingham some time afterwards, in the following
curious terms. " In expressing his lineage you may boldly affirm him to be akin to the Queen's
Majesty, both by King Henry VIII. her father, and also by the Q. Mother, and he is of the blood
royal in the same degree that my Lord of Huntingdon is, the'diff'erence being only that my Lord of
Huntingdon is of a brother of King Edward the I Vth, and my Lord of Rutland of the sister of the
same King, and indeed thereby he is as near in blood, though further in danger of fortune's wheel,
which is busy with carriage of King's crowns to and fro." — Digges' Cnmpleat Ambassador, 39.
Being a ward of the Court, this young Nobleman received great attentions from Sir William in
his capacity of Master of the Wards. Camden says, he became a profound lawyer under his care,
and accomplished with all polite learning. He ditd however very early. — On his going into the
north, Sir William sent his own son with him, Thomas, afterwards Lord Exeter, to be employed
also in the service of her Majesty. — See Sadler's State Papers, vol. ii. 34, and 40. and Strype's
Annals, vol. ii. 36. On the 19th of December following, the Secretary writes to Sir Ralph, " I am
not in health nor ease, and I wish myself there where I am sure my mind quieted, would amend
502 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
We have seen how much the Duke of Norfolk was implicated in these affairs,
though probably with a very imperfect knowledge of the actual designs of the
parties with whom he was nominally associated, all of whom, as well in Scotland
as England, seemed to make his projected marriage with the Queen of Scots,
a handle to accomplish their purposes. It is indeed, it must be confessed,
extremely difficult to unravel the mystery of this negotiation, especially as we
have the account from the three suspicious contemporary historians, whom it is
often hard to reconcile. Rapin has applied his diligence to do this on many
occasions, and to him therefore we would refer, not for a solution of the difficulties
attending the case, but for an account of its progress. As far as Norfolk himself
was concerned, he professed to have had in view no more than to prevent Mary's
marrying a foreign Catholic Prince, [see his letter to the Secretary in Haynes, 572.]
to promote the union of the two kingdoms, and further the establishment of the
Protestant religion in both countries. But with such views as these he could
not be much in the confidence of the heads of the rebellion. The Duke, how-
ever, seems to have been more upon his guard, as to joining the northern insur-
gents, having, as we before said, sent their letters to the Court. And it was for
this reason, probably, that we find the Secretary addressing to him, at this time,
one of his customary memorials, under two titles of Perils and Remedies, which,
as descriptive of the state of the nation, as it appeared to this discerning and
indefatigable Statesman, we shall feel it our duty to transcribe.
Perils.
" A conspiration of the Pope, King Philip, the French King, and sundry
Potentates in Italy, to employ all their forces for the subversion of the Professors
of the Gospel.
my unquiet body," (probably at Burghley.) Sir Ralph Sadler being now serving with LordSussex,
Lieutenant of the North, the Secretary commends him highly, for the good reports he made of
Lord Sussex's zeal and judicious conduct, as that Lord, he observes, had "hard constructors of
his doings at Court ;" meaning probably Leicester and his faction. " My Lord of Sussex' doings,
hath been well reported by you, and so I think he hath deserved, otherwise he hath had some lack
of allowance here, which will, I trust, amend, and it is a good deed to hold up any nobleman when
he meaneth well." In another place he says of Lord Sussex ; " I know none endowed with better
parts for a nobleman, and peer of the realm, than he is." The rivalry between this Lord, and Lord
Leicester is pretty generally known ; it is to the credit of the Secretary that he was on Lord Sussex's
side. " My knowledge of his worthiness," says he in one of his letters to Sir Ralph, " maketh me
affectionated to him, and certainly nothing else."— He could not have said so much of Lord Leicester.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 503
" The intention of the same formed to be extended against England, imme-
diately after the subduing of the Prince of Conde" and his associates.*
" The Spaniard daily avaunts in the Low Countries within short time to
possess this realm without any battle.
" The opinion they have conceived of the weakness of this realm, by reason
of the lack of experience of the subjects in feats of war ; and secondly, for that
the papistical subjects, being fled out of the realm, have made books in manner
of registers : accounting, in every shire and great town of the realm, who be
assured to the Roman religion ; making their estimate of more than the best
half of noblemen and gentlemen to be theirs.
" The secret collections of money that are made in the realm by procurators
of the Papists.
" The evident knowledge had for a truth, what the judges, the lawyers, both
of the common law and the civil, are in this matter.f
" The danger hereof also is the greater, because the wise Papists of England,
as well those abroad as those at home, are by former examples taught, if ever
the power shall be in their hands, never to suffer any, being contrary to them,
to have power : remembering that which is said in the science military, non
licet bis in hello peccare.
"The discovery of a great number of gentlemen lately in Lancashire, that
have, upon persuasion, forborne to come to the church ; with opinion shortly to
enjoy the use of the Popish religion.
" Lastly, to speak as my entire thoughts be by the examples of the Scripture ;
the long tranquillity which this realm hath enjoyed, the plentiful teaching of the
truth, and the general neglecting thereof, must needs provoke the wrath of God."
We have given this statement of Perils at length, because we think the truth
of it may be well proved from history ; and the Secretary as well as his Royal
* Knox, in a letter to Wood, Secretary to the Regent Murray, dated Feb. 14, 1568, writes,
" In my opinion England and Scotland have both no less cause to fear than the faithful in
France, for what they suffer in present action is laid up in store, let us be assured, for both coun-
tries."— McCrie, Appendix, No. x. In another letter of the same year, Sept. 10, he writes, " Let
England take heed, for assuredly their neighbours' houses are on fire."
f The lawyers appear to have been a good deal disaffected - some of them being called before
the Council, or ecclesiastical Commissioners, alleged, " That they came to the Temple Church
upon Sundays and holydays, meaning no more than that they came and walked about the
roundal there." — Strype, Collier, fyc.
504 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
Mistress, are continually charged by the advocates of Queen Mary, not only
with having exaggerated the threatened dangers, but with having actually
pretended dangers for which there was no ground. It is fit, therefore, that those
who would do strict justice to the vigilance of the Queen's Ministers, should
search the pages of history, and judge for themselves of the actual perils with
which Elizabeth and her kingdom were beset ; instead of vainly attributing to
the former, motives of a merely private nature; the gratification of her own
narrow, selfish, and malignant feelings, in the persecution of a helpless woman,*
in refusing to acknowledge her to be her heir. " I care not for myself," said
she, on a memorable occasion; " my life is not dear to me — my care is for my
people. I pray God, whosoever succeedeth me, be as careful as I am. They
which know what cares I bear, would not think I took any great joy in wearing
a crown." " These ears," says Bishop Jewel, from whom we have the account,
" heard, when her Majesty spake these words."
We now proceed, then, to the Secretary's statement of
Remedies.
" The principal is, to amend our lives ; and to be thankful indeed for the
benefit of the Gospel.
" The second resteth in using those means that Almighty God has left to this
realm, which consisteth in many parts, viz.
" That the Queen's Majesty unite all her faithful subjects, that profess the
Gospel sincerely, both to herself, by giving them comfort and credit, and also
among themselves, by removing all partial faction.
" The procuring of some aid secretly for the Prince of Conde, if the French
King will refuse to have the Queen a moderator of peace; as presently she hath
sent to offer the same : whereof as yet no answer is had ; but if it be refused
' The following passage from Rapin, seems to us to represent things in so just a light, that
we cannot refrain from transcribing it. " The truth is, Mary was unhappy only in having too
zealous adherents, who, by all their proceedings, pushed her more and more towards the preci-
pice ; but this is no wonder, they acted not for her sake, but for their own ends, and the interest
of the Romish religion, to which she served for pretence. James Melvil, who was no enemy to
Mary, observes in his Memoirs, that both the parties equally did her hurt ; the one by acting
directly against her, the other by serving her with too much zeal." Leslie, Bishop of Ross, very
particularly her avowed minister and agent, by engaging in all the plots laid against Elizabeth,
could not but induce the latter to suppose that he acted agreeably to his Mistress's inclinations
and orders.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 505
then is made apparent by themselves, that their intention is to prosecute the
subversion of the common cause of religion.
O
" To view the power of the realm, and to put it in order (and especially the
countries upon the sea-coast towards Flanders and France), by special Com-
missioners.
" To make the navy ready.
" To embrace such leagues as the Princes of Almain do offer for defence
of religion."
It is fortunate for the credit of this great Statesman, that we are able to look
into the history of Europe at large, and thereby to judge of the real grounds
of his apprehensions.* Had he been, as we observed before, only endeavouring
to excite false alarms, to give a colour to the harshness or severity of his
remedies, as he called them, we might ask, how it happened, that things. abroad,
should seem so to concur as to bear him out in all his calculations of danger?
Had there been no design on foot to overthrow Protestantism, and destroy the
Reformers, we might ask, how so many foreigners should suddenly come across
the water, as was the case this year, for refuge and safety? The very reception
of whom, with any degree of hospitality, was sure to be resented by many of
the Courts abroad. f And yet that they were well and hospitably received here,
and by none more than the Secretary,^ is notorious and indisputable. From
the first dawn of the Reformation, England became an asylum for the persecuted
of all countries, with a noble disdain of the anger of the persecutors. Thus, as
Strype relates, Elizabeth was moved at this time, not only to receive with a
friendly concern, the refugees of Flanders and France, but to send help to the
* Montanus's History of the Spanish Inquisition, was published about this time, translated by
Vincent Skinner, of Lincoln's-Inn, supposed by Strype to be Secretary to Sir William Cecil.
There was surely some reason for such a publication, when, as it is stated in the preface, the
Inquisition was come so near to England as the Low Countries. — See Strypts Annals, ch. liii.
t Of the Pope's resentment there can be little doubt. The following occurs in his famous
bull, speaking of the encouragement given to the Protestants, " adnitente inter c&terosjlagitiorum
sena Elizabetha prcetensa Angliee Regina, ad quam veluti ad asylum, omnium infestissimi pro-
fugium invenerunt."
J A very deserving man, Rodolphus Cavallerius (or Cavalier) a French Protestant, who had
been in England in the reign of Edward VI., and thereby probably well known to the Secretary,
was this year, by his means, and that of his worthy father-in-law, Sir Anthony Cook, and with
the particular sanction of Archbishop Parker and Bishop Grindal, advanced to the Professorship
of Hebrew in the University of Cambridge, with a Prebendal stall at Canterbury.
VOL. II. 3 T
506 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
professors of the Gospel, in the latter country, " chiefly by her Secretary
CECIL, a man very cordial in the Protestajit interest," of which, a letter still
preserved from Theodore Wierus, an accredited agent of the Prince of Conde,
is no small proof. It is addressed " Nobilissimo et illustri virtute, doctrina et
rerum experientia Dno Dno Gulielmo CECYLIO, auratae militise equiti, et
sereniss. Anglorum ReginaB a secretis, &c. : dno observando." It is written
from Plymouth, in acknowledgment of the Secretary's great attention to the
cause of Protestantism, on the eve of his departure for the Continent. Alluding
to his support of the Prince of Conde, he says, " Mei officii esse existimavi, ut
priusquam ex hac insula solverem, singulares tibi pro celsitudine illius gratias
agerem." Owning, to adopt the close and correct translation of Strype, " That
the illustrious Prince his master, and the whole French Church, were upon
many accounts indebted to him, that with so great pains and study he had
forwarded with the Queen, the business committed to him by that Prince ; and
that all whom God the Father had exercised at that time for the purer profession
of his Son, had not only their hope but even their confidence in him ; and that
they looked upon him to be raised up by God, in those daily extremities of the
poor Church, to use both his piety and his prudence in their behalf. That he,
for his part, as often as he thought on the most Christian Queen's care and good
will towards the scattered and afflicted Christians, so often he had an honourable
and grateful remembrance of him, who seemed by the special will of God, to be
added to the Queen in those most difficult times."*
The Secretary, however, was not satisfied with these compliments and acknow-
ledgments on the part of the Protestants ; he was desirous of vindicating to the
whole world, the course and measure of the Queen's proceedings : ana to this
effect an extraordinary letter is still to be seen amongst the Cecil MSS., addressed
by the Secretary to one who had expostulated with him, Signer Bertano, at
Rome ; abstracts of which are to be found in Strype's Annals ; one passage is
very noticeable, as addressed to an Italian and member of the Church of Rome,
' Mr. Turner, in his late publication of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, book ii. ch. xxvii. has
made it very apparent that several of the English Nobility were at this time " traitorously busy,"
as he calls it, with the French Minister, to hinder the Queen's sending any succours to the Pro-
testants abroad. Mr. Turner has had the advantage of consulting the MSS. of the French
Ambassador Fenelon, in the hands of Mr. Murray; his information on these points is, therefore,
very important; especially as his researches appear to have led him to this conclusion, that
had Cecil not been thwarted and counteracted at this time by others, the Reformation in France
would have prevailed.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 507
in which the Secretary insists upon the care taken by the Reformers, to depart
no farther from the Romish Church, than the strict letter of the Scriptures and
ancient formularies rendered necessary, and to their apprehension indispen-
sable. " In the mean season, I can assure you, whatsoever slanders are raised
of us, for our errors in religion, or for our government in policy towards our
neighbours, this I dare affirm, that by no common law or order established for
matters of religion in this realm, we do differ from profession of all the parts of
the Holy Scriptures, of the Articles of the common Creed ; yea, as for external
discipline, I can assure you, our Church is more replenished with ecclesiastical
ancient rites, than was the Primitive Church in five hundred years after Christ:
insomuch as the Church of England is by the Germans, French, Scots, and
others, that call themselves reformed, thought to be herein corrupted, for retaining
so much the rites of the Church of Rome."* This is entirely consistent with
what we have before represented to be the true and exact spirit and design of
the English Reformation, namely, not to discard more than was strictly neces-
sary, upon the principle that under all its abuses and corruptions, much
appertaining and belonging to the true Primitive and Catholic Church, was to
be found among the Romanists. In this letter, the Secretary also justifies the
Queen's proceedings with foreign powers, shewing her to be no wilful abettor
of rebellious movements, as some pretended,'!" but a mediator to procure peace
and a good understanding between all neighbouring princes and their subjects,
and especially anxious to stay persecution ; but it must be admitted that it was
difficult to do so, against the efforts of the Court of Rome, which was never
perhaps more upon the watch to uphold its power and authority, by the sup-
pression or annihilation of the Protestants, than at this time. This appears from
a Latin letter still preserved, from Killegrew to the Secretary, dated Romce
die, xviii. Junij 69, to be seen in Strype's Annals, ch. liii., and from which it
appears, that great anxiety was manifested at Rome, lest the King of France
* I know not why Collier should accuse the Secretary as he does, of neither arguing the
points, nor assigning the reasons for satisfaction in this letter ; I confess he seems to me to have
done both.
f In a letter from Killegrew to the Secretary, dated from Hamburgh, May 25, 1569, he writes,
"To make an end till farther occasion, I think the Queen's Majesty be more feared and
honoured this day of all countries, what religion so ever they be of, than ever any of her
Majesty's predecessors before her was. I beseech God her Highness do hold fast, and then I do
not doubt but to see in her days, the ancient honour and fame of England restored again, to
the glory of God, whom I beseech to preserve your Honour and all yours."
,
508 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
should conclude a peace, upon the proffered mediation of the Queen ; the Pope
enjoining prayers to be publicly offered up to God, to implore aid and assistance
against all Hugonots. " Galli hie negant regem accepturum conditiones pacis,
Pontifex tamen id metuit, et publicis supplicationibus ad Deum jubet rogari
victoriam adversus omnes Hugonottos." — And to shew how entirely his views
were bent against the Protestants and Protestantism generally ; of all people
in the world to whom the annual compliment of a consecrated sword and hat
were this year to be sent, that great tyrant and persecutor, the Duke of Alva,
was particularly selected ;* while the Queen of England, by an extraordinary
Bull, was anathematised and deprived of her kingdom, her subjects discharged
from all bonds of allegiance, and as Bishop Jewel, in reply to this Romish ful-
mination, observed, imboldened to burn, spoil, rob, kill, and cut one another's
throats-t
We have no eager desire to dwell upon these things, but as the Jacobitical
advocates of Queen Mary have chosen to make a mockery of the apprehensions
of the great Statesman whose public life we are recording, and would fain load
him and his Sovereign with the hateful charge of the most unprovoked persecu-
tion, rigour, and severity ; common justice seems to demand, that in such an
undertaking as the present, we should endeavour to rescue the truth from every
false colouring, and do what justice we can to all parties. It is impossible to
deny that Queen Mary's was a most hard case ; and had it not been notoriously
mixed up with so many plots, cabals, and intrigues, against the peace of
England, the security of Elizabeth, and the newly established Protestant
Churches in Scotland and England, it might be extremely difficult to justify the
steps taken against her, even up to this time. Strype, who always endeavours to
set things in the plainest light, after speaking of the great expenses incurred
by the Court in providing for Mary, adds, " But it is more material to relate the
cause why Queen Elizabeth did thus detain her at this great cost to herself and
her subjects. She was the chief head of the Frenchified and Popish Scots :
by whose means the Guisian faction, that mortally hated the Queen, and were
' The whole passage is curious: "Pontifex singulis annis consecrat in festo natalis Christi
gladium et pileum, quos mittit alicui principi, qui ilti videtur bonam operam navare rebus ponti-
ficatus, hoc anno misit ista duo Albano (Alba dud) quippe qui liberavit Belgium ab Hugonottis,
et ob bellum feliciter gestum adversus Uranium [Aurangice principem] et est ratio qusedam
honestandi et adraonendi principes ut acrius tueantur res pontificatus."
t See this Bull in Burnet's Collections of Records, vol. ii. No. 13.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BUllGHLEY. 509
conjured together to invade her kingdom, and dethrone her, and overthrow the
religion established, did hope to attain their ends, and therefore there was a
necessity of keeping her in hold, (though at first the Queen did not intend it,*)
for her own safety and defence ; besides the long jealousies between that Queen
and Elizabeth, there is a letter of hers sent from Tutbury Castle, in March, to
the Queen : wherein she doth in some places closely touch upon her in her
expostulations, and even threaten her."
This is certainly, as it appears to us, a very true account of what we shall
call the sad perplexities of this unhappy case. As for Mary's expostulations
and threats, we may well admire the spirit that dictated them, but it does not
follow that, in the extraordinary circumstances in which Elizabeth herself was
placed, they were altogether deserved. In the beginning of this very year,
Mary is alleged to have encouraged her party in Scotland, by many false charges
against Elizabeth and her Council ; the Secretary being the particular subject
of one of her fabricated reports ; it being affirmed that he and Murray had
entered into a most extraordinary league, affecting the succession to both crowns.
Murray, upon the setting aside Mary, and eventual death of her son without
issue, to be heir of Scotland, and by marriage of a daughter of Cecil to the
Earl of Hertford, the widower of the Lady Catherine Grey, to engraft the
family of the Secretary on the Suffolk line, and thereby connect it with the
crown of England ; nor were there omitted surmises and insinuations of the
removal, on both sides, of all intermediate claimants, as Mary herself and her
son, and the two sons of Lord Hertford by Lady Catherine. These fabricated
charges may be seen in an intercepted letter from Mary, in Haynes, 503, with
Elizabeth's proclamation in refutation of such misrepresentations, p. 500, and
Lord Hunsdon's correspondence with the Secretary, calculated to throw much
light on the subject : in fact, the real cause of all Mary's troubles in England
should be sought first in her communications with her Scottish and foreign
friends, while comparatively at liberty ;| and secondly, in her covert intrigues
* See in Burnet, vol. ii. part ii. Sir Walter Mildmay's opinion concerning the keeping of the
Queen of Scots, dated at Windsor Castle, Oct. 26, 1569. Collection of Records, No. 12. p. 512.
N.B. A paper of considerable importance, as tending to shew the extreme difficulty of the case, as
it regarded England, and the small confidence reposed in Murray, and other opponents of Mary,
by Elizabeth, though she is often represented as constantly giving full credit to them ngainst Mary.
+ See Lord Hunsdon's letter from Berwick to the Secretary, Haynes, 523, date Sept. 18, 1569.
" Her (the Q. of Scotts) letters pass daily to and fro, encouraging such as hath taken her part to
consist in the same, with many fair promises of rewards, and assurance to be in Scotland very
510 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
against Elizabeth, when under greater restraint. In this early stage of the
business she certainly threw out many threats against Elizabeth, and no idle
ones, if she could once have recovered her freedom ; she had many more friends
than Elizabeth, and all of them powerful friends, and the great wonder, to those
who will give themselves the trouble to search deeply into the history of those
times, is, not how Mary became a victim to the politics of her friends, but how
Elizabeth could be preserved as she was preserved, on a tottering throne, for so
many years, though for her credit, and the credit of her great Minister, we
certainly wish it could have been free from the competition of the Scottish
Queen; but the circumstances of Europe, which have never yet been sufficiently
taken into the account, seem entirely to have forbidden this. It cannot, indeed,
be denied that the royal captive did often regard the Secretary as her great
enemy, and particularly on her removal to Tutbury this very year, which being
in the neighbourhood of the Earl of Huntingdon (a presumptive heir to the
crown of England), led her to apprehend some dark design in it, as she told
Mr. White, who, in a letter to the Secretary himself, printed by Haynes, thus
describes what passed in an interview he had just had with her: " She said
nothing directly of yourself to me ; but after supper, Mr. Harry Knollys and
I fell into some close conference, and he, among other things, told me how
loth the Queen was to leave Bolton Castle, not sparing to give forth in speech,
that the Secretary was her enemy, and that she mistrusted by this removal, he
would cause her to be made away ; and that her danger was so much the more,
because there was one dwelling very nigh Tutbury, which pretended title ii\j
succession to the crown of England (meaning the Earl of Huntingdon) ; but
when her passion was past (as he told me), she said, that though the Secretary
was not her friend, yet she must say that he was an expert, wise man, a main-
tainer of all good laws for the government of this realm, and a faithful servant
to his mistress ; wishing it might be her luck to get the friendship of so wise a
man." It was always Mary's ill fortune, to have her personal accomplishments
shortly ; and great threatenirigs to such as hath taken part against her, unless they recant ; but
if they will acknowledge their duty and allegiance to her, then for all faults past, Remissionem
Pcccatomm.
" Her principal messenger in this affair is Dan Car of Shylstock Braes, a common and notorious
thief and murderer, and one of the killers of the scout of this town at my first coming. He
saith that he has my Lord of Shrewsbury's passport. If I come by him ye shall hear both of
him and his letters."
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 5H
operate to her disadvantage, not merely as Elizabeth's rival in youth and beauty,
as some pretend, but from the power they gave her over those who had access
to her ; the writer of the letter just referred to, saw the danger of this very fully.
" But if I (which in the sight of God bear the Queen's Majesty a natural love
beside my bounden duty) might give advice, there should very few subjects in
this land have access to, or conference with this Lady; for beside that she is a
goodly personage, she hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty Scotch speech,
and a searching wit, clouded with mildness. Fame might move some to relieve
her, and glory joined to gain might stir others to adventure much for her sake.
Then joy is a lively infective sense, and carrieth many persuasions to the heart,
which ruleth all the rest.* Mine own affection by seeing the Queen's Majesty
our Sovereign is doubled, and thereby I guess what sight might work in others.
Her hair of itself is black, and yet Mr. Knolls told me, that she wears hair of
sundry colours.
" In looking upon her cloth of estate, I noted this sentence embroidered,
En ma Jin est mon commencement ; which is a riddle I understand not. The
greatest personage in the house about her is the Lord of Levingston and the
Lady his wife, which is a fair gentlewoman ; and it was told me, both Protes-
tants. She hath nine women more, fifty persons in household, with ten horses.
(N. B. How different from Lochleven.) The Bishop of Ross lay then three
miles off, in a town called Burton upon Trent, with another Scottish Lord. My
Lord of Shrewsbury is very careful of his charge, but the Queen overwatches
them all ; for it is one of the clock at least every night ere she go to bed. The
next morning I was up timely, and viewing the seat of the house, which in mine
opinion stands much like Windsor, I espied two halberd-men without the castle
wall, searching underneath the Queen's bed-chamber window. — Thus have I
* That Mary had found many friends already in England besides the Catholics, is evident from
the account given by Sir Nicholas Throckmorton of a discourse he had with her father-in-law, the
Earl of Lennox, when walking with the Queen (Elizabeth) in her garden at Greenwich.
" The Earl said, that he marvelled that the Q. of Scots, a woman so ill thought of heretofore,
began now to find friends, and to be favoured in England and Scotland. Whereunto he (Sir N.)
answered, that three things, as he thought, did move that. The first her misery, whereof all men
naturally take compassion : the second, her entertainment of such as came to her: and the third,
the opinion that some had of her title in succession ; whereunto there were exceptions, as there
were to other titles, and as few to hers as to others. And both the Earl and he, in that confe-
rence, had this speech on both parts, that they prayed God to preserve the Queen's Majesty, for
neither of them would be glad to live under the Queen of Scots.'' — Hayncs, 548.
512 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
troubled your Honour with rehearsall of this long colloquy, happened between
the Queen of Scots and me, though the greatest part of our communication
was in the presence of my Lord of Shrewsbury and Mr. Harry Knolls."
That no small attention was at this time paid to Mary's high rank and station
in life, we may conclude from the very circumstance to which Strype alludes at
the beginning of the passage above cited, namely, her Expenses, which were a
subject of complaint on the part of the Earl of Shrewsbury, addressed to the
Lord Treasurer, whose interposition he requests, to put things upon a better
footing. It may surprise the reader to be told that her Majesty bathed in wine ;
but among other things provided for her supply and accommodation by his
Lordship, it is expressly stated, that the wine alone amounted to a considerable
charge, "for ivhen she bathed, she bathed in wine;' and afterwards, "Two
tun of wine a month Jiitherto would not suffice ordinarily ; besides that was used
at times for her bathing, and such like uses."* Considering Elizabeth's known
parsimony, such little incidents as these may serve to shew, that she was not
regardless of the high condition of her prisoner, or sparing of expenses suitable
thereto ;t not at first that is ; for we shall have to shew what were the probable
causes of subsequent restraints and retrenchments, when the time arrives to
speak of them. Already, however, as it would appear from the paper of Sir
Walter Mildmay just referred to, one of the cautions recommended to be used,
was, to diminish the number of her attendants, being then about forty persons
[according to White's letter], to the one half, to make thereby the Queen's
* See this letter in Lodge's Illustrations of History, vol. ii. 27. In Digges's Compleat Ambas-
sador, p. 11, is to be seen a very curious statement of the gracious treatment of Mary, quite
equal to, if not exceeding, her former state in Scotland.
f We shall mention another incident creditable to the feelings of Elizabeth, in Lodge's Illus-
trations of History. A letter fiom the Secretary to the Earl of Shrewsbury, dated from Green-
wich, May 15, — 69, begins thus : —
" Yesterday the Bishop of Ross gave me your Lordship's letter, containing the recovery of the
Queen of Scots' health upon the peril wherein she was by receiving of certain pills. Her Majesty
having knowledge by report of Mr. Candish [Cavendish], of the said Queen's peril, was very
sorry, and so also glad of her recovery ; and indeed it were good her physician were reproved in
his audacity to put her in such peril, as I have heard he did the like heretofore."
The conclusion of this letter has also something courteous in it towards the unhappy prisoner:
" Order is given to Carlisle to put to full liberty the Queen of Scots' servants ; and surely the
Deputy Warden doth it of some error, for on my faith I know not of any direction given him
therein, and so I pray your Lordship to assure the Queen of Scots. " W. CECIL."
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 513
charges the less, and to give her the fewer means of intelligence. The conclu-
sion of this curious memorial may serve to shew, how little an imprisonment of
eighteen years, only to be terminated by a trial and execution, were contemplated
at that time. See also Lord Sussex's letter to Sir William Cecil, April 25, 1570,
in Lodge, vol. i. 40, with the editor's note. " That she be retained here until
the estate of Scotland be more settled, and the state of other countries now
in garboil be quieted, the issue whereof is like to be seen in a year or two"
I would observe that in the document immediately following Sir Walter
Mildmay's opinion, and purporting to be a letter from Lord Leicester to the
Earl of Sussex concerning the Queen of Scots, and marked, as well as the
foregoing, No. 12, is to be found a most statesmanlike discussion of the Queen's
great embarrassments as to the treatment of Mary ; Lord Leicester's opinion on
this occasion inclining to her release under conditions. And indeed it may be
seen by the papers in Haynes, all preserved by Sir William Cecil, that in the
month of March of this year, the Queen's party in Scotland were invited by the
Regent to repair to Edinburgh, and join the Council, to frame such heads and
articles as (upon acknowledgment of the King's authority) might redound to the
Queen, their Sovereign Lord's mother's honour, advancement, and commodity ;
but this was defeated by the neglect of the Queen's party to fulfil their agree-
ments, or acknowledge the King's authority.*
In September, a special Messenger (Henry Carey) appears to have been sent
from the Court to the Regent of Scotland, with the following inquiries and
demands, from a minute by the Secretary.
" First, what assurance shall be given us by hostages, if the Q. of Scots be
returned into Scotland, that she shall not be in danger of her life, but that she
shall live her natural life without any sinister means to shorten the same ; and
the said Earl shall understand that the more hostages in number and greatness
of title shall be given us, the more shall be our contentation for all respects."f
* See Lord Hunsdon's letter to the Secretary, April 18, 1569, Haynes, 514. See also the
copy of the Degreis sent by John Wood, p. 516, 517, indorsed by the Secretary.
f Of other treaties set on foot for her deliverance, a good account may be seen in Strype's
Annals at the conclusion of ch. Ivii, with the causes which prevented their being brought to any
good end, extracted from the Secretary's own papers, vol. i. part ii. p. 383. The chief difficulties
seem to have been occasioned by Mary's friends, who were constantly practising underhand, with
the discontented of both countries and the foreign Catholic Governments, to the great peril of
Elizabeth. — See also Rapin under the year 1570.
VOL. II. 3 U
514 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
Demand is then made of six hostages at the least, three Earls and three
Lords of Parliament, to remain in England, upon the charges of the crown of
Scotland, as sureties that the Queen of Scots shall enjoy such estate, as by the
Parliament of Scotland shall be granted to her, and that she shall continue the
course of her natural life without any ill usage of her person to the danger
thereof.
It is easy to say that this was all pretence, and a mere show to quiet those
who were importunate for her release; and, indeed, it is stated at the beginning
of the instructions given to Carey, that the urgency of the case arose out of the
continual solicitations of the friends of that Queen to have something decided,
and a choice made between the "sundry ways of proceeding" that had' been
" proposed ;" but then we must consider, that Mary's own plan was to be
removed to France, as appears from a letter to the Secretary written by the
Earl of Huntingdon and Viscount Hereford, appointed assistants to the Earl of
Shrewsbury, and dated only six days after the Instructions, in which it is
stated, that Mary " still desired to go into France, where she now is in great
hope to have aid, because, as she saith, the Admiral is overthrown."* We
rather wonder she should have allowed herself to say this, because the over-
throw of the Admiral (Coligni), the death of his brother (Anddot),^ and of
the Duke of Deux-ponts, about this time, gave great advantage to the Catholic
party, and to her relatives of the House of Lorrain, against the Hugonots, and
furnished no small reason to the English Court to prevent her going to that
country ; this, however, might be the occasion of their consulting about her
removal to Scotland, for it may still be very confidently asserted that her deten-
tion, besides the expenses attending it, was full of hazards to Elizabeth.
But to return to other matters ; the Puritans were busy this year as usual,
and fully as earnest to have the Reformation carried farther, as the Romanists
were to have the old religion restored ; an. ignorant writer of this sect (for so he
seems to have been from the style of his letter) particularly addressed the
* Haynes, 532. From this letter it will be seen how strong a charge is brought against the
Bishop of Ross (Leslie) of having misrepresented both Lords, and uttered a deliberate falsehood
of the Viscount Hereford.
f In Strype's Life of Bishop Grindal it is stated that the Admiral and his brother were both
poisoned by the Popish faction, and the villain that did it acknowledged that Catherine de
Medicis the Queen set him on. The Admiral survived, but Aiidelot died; the Catholics
imputed his death to a malignant fever, but it is more generally attributed to poison.— Life of
Grindal, 203.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 515
Secretary upon the subject in a paper which Strype has printed ; his name was
Christopher Foster, alias Colman.* He professed to " write" in zeal, love com-
pelling him out of a simple heart." Offence was taken by others of the party
at the encouragement given to dramatic performances, particularly at Court,
wherein the children of the chapel often assisted, and appear to have been
even formed into a regular company for such exhibitions. This occasioned a
pamphlet to be put forth this year, entitled, " The Children of the Chapel
stript and whipt;" in which is to be found the following remark : " Plaies will
never be supprest whilst her Majesties unfledged minions flaunt it in silkes and
sattens ; they had as well be at their Popish service in the devils garments. "f
Much as the Secretary's time was taken up (well or ill, for he often appears
to have written letters in his bed) with state affairs, he was little less occupied
with the concerns of the Church and Universities. Dr. Whitgift, then Master
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,
seems to have had many occasions to apply to him this year from that seat of
learning, particularly in regard to the admission of Westminster Scholars into
that College, some having endeavoured to go beyond the statute ; he was
called upon to interpose in the appointment of a Master of St. John's College,
where great feuds and animosities had arisen, beyond the power of the Visitor
to appease ; but Sir William was appealed to, as the natural and most acknow-
ledged patron of that house, of which he had formerly been a member ; Bishop
Grindal particularly addressing him as such, at the conclusion of the business.
At King's College also some differences had occurred, which were referred to
him, after the Visitor had in vain endeavoured to settle them. These things may be
seen in the Life of Whitgift by Strype, and cannot fail to evince the Secretary's
constant and indefatigable attention to every thing relating to the peace and
well-ordering of the nation, whether it regarded what was passing abroad, or at
home. It is, in short, almost impossible to discover any transaction of a public
nature, that was not after some manner or other submitted to his particular
judgment and discretion ; and though his office of Secretary might, in a great
degree, account for the infinity of letters addressed to him, and still preserved
in our several public repositories, yet it is remarkable how invariably in all such
addresses there appears to be a direct appeal made to his individual decision,
sentence, and determination.
* See also Collier, ii. 522, 523. f Nichols's Progresses, i. 488.
516 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1569.
A very few things more remain to be noticed, as belonging to the year 1569.
We ought not perhaps to pass over the death of Bishop Boner, who died this
year in the Marshalsea prison, and under a sentence of excommunication. His
incarceration does not appear to have been attended with any circumstances of
extreme rigour ; he is even said to have passed much of his time there in feasting
and banqueting; nor was any advantage taken of his excommunication to
exclude him from the rights of Christian burial, though the prudent Bishop
Grindal wisely judged it expedient to direct his funeral to be at night, to save
his remains from the resentment of the populace ; some indignities, however,
could not be entirely prevented. An account of all these things was regularly
sent to the Secretary, in a letter from the Bishop, to be seen in Strype.*
Another great enemy of the Reformation was this year also stopped in his
career of hostility to the Church and the Queen's Government (but of whom
we shall have more to say hereafter) ; this was Dr. Story, a furious bigot, who
had most audaciously, in his place as a member of the House of Commons,
professed to regret the lenity of the last government towards the Queen when
Princess ; and would have stirred up the Duke of Alva to invade the kingdom.
It was in his service, indeed, that he was beguiled into an English ship in Flan-
ders, and speedily conveyed over to the opposite shore. Of the great cruelties
of himself and Boner, Strype has mentioned many particular instances after
Fox, but we need not dwell on them here ; it is very certain that they were
both most relentless persecutors of the professors of the Gospel. Story was
afterwards executed, claiming to be a subject of the King of Spain, and
renouncing all allegiance to Elizabeth.f
This year was memorable for the first establishment of those foreign semi-
naries of Popish priests and Jesuits, which contributed so much to the disturbance
of the Queen's Government. The first College of this kind was founded at
Douay,J under the express auspices, and at the particular charge of Philip,
King of Spain; Dr. William Allen, an Englishman, afterwards made a Car-
* Life of Grindal, 209.
t See Strype s Annals, ii. 124., 125, &c. for an account of his death and will.
J The College of Douay, for English refugee priests, was established in 1568, or 1569.
— Lingard, 374. Strype seems, but I believe through inadvertence, to place this event several
years later. — Annals, ii. 630. It was dissolved by Reguesens, while Governor of Flanders,
but revived at Rheims in 1575, under the protection of the Cardinal of Lorrain, and returned
to Douay in 1593. Similar colleges were founded at Rome in 1579, at Valladolid in 1589, at
St. Omer in 1596, and at Louvain in \6Q6.—Hallam, 147.
1569.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 517
dinal, being placed at the head of it. It was not till ten years afterwards, that
the college at Rome, of which Persons was made the rector, was founded for
the same purposes, namely for the breeding up English Missionaries, expressly
to endeavour the restitution of the Pope's authority in this kingdom, by exciting
differences among the Protestants, of which we shall have in the course of our
history many instances to produce.
Among the measures adopted at this time, for the better security and defence
of the kingdom, which required the most prompt and vigilant attention, we
read of the first public Lottery being drawn this year, 1569 ; it consisted, we
are told, of 400,000 lots, at 10*. each lot. The prizes were plate, and the
profits were to be applied to the repair of the havens of the kingdom. It
was drawn at the west door of St. Paul's Cathedral. The drawing is stated to
have begun on the llth of January, and to have been continued inces-
santly, day and night, till the 6th of May following. The proposals for this
lottery were published in the years 1567, 1568.* The prizes were previously
exhibited at the house of the Queen's jeweller and goldsmith, Mr. Dericke,
in Cheapside.
* Maitland, after Stowe. In Mr. Ellis's collection of original letters, vol. ii. second series, are
two letters from the celebrated Sir Thomas Gresham to Sir William Cecil, calculated, as the
Editor has observed, to throw light upon the money transactions of the time of Queen Elizabeth;
one letter is of the date of 1568, the other of 1569. It is remarkable, that Sir Thomas appears
to have regularly stipulated that all who advanced loans under his guarantee should be released
from the statute of usury. Sir Thomas, probably, had often some hard bargains to make, when
occasion arose for prolonging the time of payment. The ordinary rate of interest at this time was
fixed by statute at ten per cent.
CHAP. XL
1570.
Twelfth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, began Nov. 17, 1.569.
A year of extreme danger— Stri/pe's abstract, with remarks upon it — Bullinger on the Pope's
Bull— Bacon, Cecil, Mildmay, and Sadler denounced as Evil Counselled— Norfolk
Rebellion— Wylson's Translation of Demosthenes dedicated to Lord Burghley — Car*-
•wright excites disturbances — Opposition of the Puritans unreasonable — Lord Burghley,
as Chancellor of Cambridge, much annoyed by them — Project of Marriage between
Elizabeth and the Due d'Anjou, afterwards Henry III.— Astrological calculations upon
it— Death of the Regent Murray — Mission of Sir William Cecil and Sir Walter
Mildmay to Mary Queen of Scots, at Chatsworth — Sir William Cecil made Lord
Burghley — Bishop Ross congratulates him— Cecil's own account of his new honours —
Death of Throckmorton — Grindal, Archbishop of York.
STRYPE, in his celebrated work on the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth,
begins his account of the year we are now entering upon in the following
manner : —
"We are now arrived to the twelfth year of the Queen's reign; a year of
extreme danger and apprehension to the Queen and the whole kingdom. For
this year the Spaniard sent great store and provision of arms and ammunition-
into Scotland. * This year the Bishop of Ross, a busy stirring factor for the
Queen of Scots, stirred up that King, the French King, and the Pope, to rescue
her by force and invasion. This year Pius V. caused a bull (more privately
sent about, 15G9) to be publicly setup in London against the Queen; which
was daringly done by one Felton, upon the Bishop of London's palace gates. f
* Of the plans formed against England, in Scotland, at this time, a good, and probably a very
just account, may be seen in Rapin, who corrects Camden, and considers the incursion of the
Scots and Carrs, which the latter historian is disposed to underrate, as only the beginning of a
very complicated and widely extended plot.
f It was also set up in Paris on the very same day, viz. March 2d, but the servant of the
English ambassador there (Walsingham) boldly tore it down. The French King professed to
be extremely sorry that such an indignity should be offered to Elizabeth ; and the Ambassador was
taught rather to impute it to the Spaniards. — Digges' Compleat Ambassador, p. 49. It may be
seen at length in Camden, and Collier, ii. 521. in English.
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 519
In which bull the Pope deprived her of all title to her kingdom, absolved her
subjects from their oath of allegiance, and charged them not to obey her upon
pain of his curse and excommunication. This year a new rebellion was ready
to break out in Norfolk, had it not been timely discovered and prevented : for
which several lost their lives: and the Papists this year were full of confident
expectation of their golden day, as they called it : and divers wizards predicted
strange things in their behalf."
If it were possible for the English reader to divest himself, for a short time,
of the commiseration he must naturally entertain for the unfortunate Mary ; if
it were possible to exculpate her as a party, even by implication, to these for-
midable preparations against his own country, he must surely be disposed to
acknowledge, that nothing less than the utmost heroism on the part of Elizabeth,
and the utmost skill and wisdom and resolution on the part of her counsellors,
ministers, and servants, could have rescued the Crown, and the Kingdom, and
the Church from the effects of such a coalition ; and if it should be said, that it
might have been disarmed and dispersed at once, by the mere delivery of the
captive Queen, the ostensible and certainly the most plausible cause of all these
proceedings, such a conclusion would be ill supported by a just view of the
angry state of Europe. Elizabeth, and England, and Scotland, and the Pro-
testant Church of both countries, we will venture to say, would, by such a
concession, only have been the more exposed to the resentment of all the
Catholic powers. " It was no hard matter," says Rapin, "for Elizabeth to
perceive that all her troubles proceeded wholly from the Queen of Scots. If
peace and quiet could have followed the setting her at liberty, she would have
done it very willingly ; but though Mary's adherents, and those who solicited
in her behalf, pretended that they acted purely from a motive of compassion,
and exclaimed against the injustice of detaining her in prison, Elizabeth was
not ignorant that their views extended much farther. The Pope, Spain, the
house of Lorrain, the Duke of Alva, the English, Scotch, and Irish Catholics,
confined not themselves to the freeing the unhappy Queen from captivity, their
aim was to set her on the throne of England. And therefore it was more
dangerous for Elizabeth to release her, than to keep her confined." " She was
a very dangerous rival, even when in prison ; how much more had she been at
liberty?" In another place the same author very sensibly observes, "I am
persuaded that they, who have hinted that compassion for Queen Mary set her
friends to work for her, had no true notion of the extraordinary plots and cabals
520 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
that were incessantly contriving on her account. I do not, however, deny that
among those who served her, some acted from that motive ; but pity was not the
swaying principle of those who managed affairs. These promoted Mary's
restoration only as a means to execute greater projects." These are very
sensible remarks, but indeed we have an admirable confirmation of them, in a
letter from Bishop Leslie to Mary herself, in which, lamenting that she gave too
much ear to the discontented in England, as well as to the foreign enemies of
the latter, he says, " Who counsell things to be attempted by shew of friendship
to your Majesty, albeit rather for their own particular pretences." Murdin, 56.
See also Cecil's short memorial of the state of the realm, Haynes, 579 ; though
this paper is called a short memorial, it is really a very long one, but deserves
great attention; for though it has been the fashion with some, to abuse the
Secretary for these state papers, yet certainly no documents can throw more
light on the actual history of things. It is easy to denounce his apprehensions
as fictitious or groundless, because the things he apprehended did not come to
pass, but this is not a right way of judging, when so many histories of Europe
are extant to inform us of the true grounds on which his apprehensions rested.
Those only can be proper judges of the memorials of this celebrated statesman,
who can find time to peruse numerous volumes of contradictory history, and
fairly separate the truth, from the false colourings and inveterate prejudices of
party writers. It was not the deliverance of Mary, so much as the advantages
to be derived from her title to the English crown, her known Catholicism, and
her attractive powers, of which her pretended friends were anxious to avail
themselves, only to further their own purposes. Resistance, a desperate resist-
ance indeed, as to all present appearances, was Elizabeth's only resource ; as
all the well disposed part of her subjects seem to have thought and felt; when
at the conclusion of the year (we must anticipate a little), on her escape from
these tremendous difficulties, extraordinary signs of joy and triumph were in all
parts exhibited, and the day of her accession to the throne, the memorable 17th
of November, marked as a solemn annual festival, in commemoration- of her
deliverance, and called by some, with an emphatic allusion to the complicated
dangers which had been averted, ' The BIRTH-DAY OF THE GOSPEL.'
We cannot wonder that Mary's sad story should alienate the minds of any
persons of sensibility from Elizabeth, as the story is commonly told, but it is not
doing the latter common justice, to speak of her upon all occasions with
such malignity as some authors do. Thus, after as fully enumerating all the
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 521
dangers to which Elizabeth stood exposed at this period as Strype himself, Dr.
Gilbert Stuart coolly says, " All the tormenting jealousies of her nature were
awakened, and she resolved to avert the machinations of the Popish potentates
with intrigue and address." Is this a fair way of speaking of a great Queen
(for so she certainly was), against whom plots were hatching in all directions,
and who stood exposed to all the vengeance of a Popish bull of excommunication
and dethronement ? Was she to be excluded from defending herself with the
very weapons employed against her ? was she to be expected to survey with no
jealousy the machinations of a whole host of Popish potentates, who had
insulted her from the moment of her accession to the crown, and were
continually denouncing her as a bastard, an usurper, an heretic, and the greatest
dissembler upon earth, when there were hundreds and thousands as false as
ever she could be ? It is very remarkable, but quite true, that while Elizabeth
is in the most vulgar manner (we can say no less of Whitaker's coarse defence
of Mary) vilified and abused for her resentment of Mary's pretensions to her
Crown, they reckon it among the praises of Mary, that " she sheweth a great
desire to be avenged of her enemies ; she sheweth a readiness to expose herself
to all perils in hope of victory." There cannot be said to be much of Christian
charity or feminine weakness (or " milkiness of mind," to use one of Mr. W's
own expressions,) contained in this encomium. — See Whitaker, second edit,
vol. i. 27. Anderson is the author cited by Whitaker,* and a note is subjoined
from Knox, on the very words, as a striking instance of "her readiness to
expose herself to all perils in hope of victory." In the contest with Murray,
after her marriage with Darnley, Knox writes, " She and the army early in the
morning, long before the sun was risen, began to march, but there arose such a
vehement tempest, as the like had not been seen before of a long time, and the
raging storm being in their faces, with great difficulty went they forward ; and
albeit the most part waxed weary, yet the Queen's courage encreasit manlike so
much, that she was ever with the foremost — divers were drowned in the waters
of the Carron." We do not copy this in dispraise of Mary, but to shew that she
could be upon occasion as " manlike" as her great rival ; and yet half the excuses
made for her yielding herself to Bothwell are, that the latter had imposed upon
a weak and timid woman. " Foible et timide," are the very words used by
* The expressions are all to be found in a letter from Sir Francis Knollys to Secretary Cecil,
dated Carlisle, June 11, 1568, and printed by Mr. Ellis in the 2d vol. of his Original Letters,
first series, p. 246.
VOL. II. 3 x
522 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
Mad11', de Keralio, and directly afterwards, " La crainte, la timidite, la mauvaise
honte 1' entrainoient rapideraent a sa perte." Though the same author refers to
Knollys' letter to Cecil, in which he says, that there were two failings which
Mary could not pardon, even in her friends: " la foiblesse et la Idchete; vices,
disoit die, [Marie] dignes d'un profond mepris." But to return.
The state of things in fact was so alarming to Elizabeth at this time, in
which she was led to regard Mary, as she often declared (and not without
reason, as Robertson admits), as the hidden cause of all, that she could not
avoid perceiving that the detaining her any longer in England would be
made the pretext or occasion of perpetual cabals and insurrections at home, as
well as of hostile attempts from abroad ; and she is alleged, in consequence of
this, to have entertained serious thoughts of delivering her up to Murray,* had
not the Bishop of Ross, together with the French and Spanish Ambassadors,
" remonstrated against the infamy of such an action, and represented the surren-
dering the Queen to her rebellious subjects, to be the same thing, as if Elizabeth
should, by her own authority, condemn her to instant death." Whether this
conclusion were well founded or not, we may surely be allowed to take
advantage of it thus far (considering the unpopular side we are taking in
this great question), to observe, in justice, we think, to Elizabeth and her
principal advisers, that as long as Elizabeth did not deliver Mary up to her
rebellious subjects, she was the protector of her life, at her own great hazard,
and to her continual annoyance. Elizabeth's purpose, however, is said to have
been put aside by the untimely death of the Regent Murray, who, at the very
beginning of this year, according to our mode of reckoning,! was shot through
the body by a musket-ball, as he rode along the streets of Linlithgow.
This foul deed being perpetrated by an Hamilton, nephew of the Archbishop
of St. Andrew's, it would seem scarcely possible to acquit that family of being
privy to the transaction, especially as certain movements against England at the
same time seemed strongly to confirm it. The Archbishop indeed is said to
have acknowledged it on his death-bed ; and it was certainly from the window
* In exchange for the Earl of Northumberland.
t 1569-70, Jan. 23. On this very day it seems Mary had liberty to correspond with her
son and friends in Scotland, by special messengers, under a free passport from Elizabeth. See
her letter to Lord Sussex^Hai/ncs, 575. We do not adduce this, as tending to connect her with
the death of Murray, but to shew that she was not under such cruel restraint at this time as her
advocates pretend.
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 523
of one of his houses that the ball was fired. The murderer escaped on a horse
belonging to John Hamilton, Abbot of Arbroath, one of the sons of the Duke
of Chatelherault, and his first course was to Hamilton, where Calderwood relates
that he was " received with great applause." More private and personal motives
however have been assigned for the perpetration of the deed, particularly an
arbitrary seizure of an estate by Murray, the loss of which, with some harsh treat-
ment, had driven his lady mad, and worked the assassin up to this bloody
resentment of his wrong; it seems very certain, however, that after the battle of
Langside, he had had his life given him by the Regent when ordered for
execution.*
It would lead us much too far, to attempt to give such a character of Murray,
as might be satisfactory to the world at large. Collier, very shortly, but very
truly has said, " as to the character of the Earl of Murray, it is very differently
drawn ;'' and Robertson says much the same. No character perhaps in the
records of modern history, as the last author seems to confess, was ever more
differently drawn ; with some writers, reaching from his own to the present
times, he passes for a monster of iniquity, with others he is as highly extolled ;
* We have already noticed a curious contradiction in Whitaker, the most furious advocate of
Mary ; where he speaks of '' the milkiness of her mind," after having just praised her (for so i'
seems) for the great desire she shewed generally to be " avenged of her enemies." The following
is another instance of his great discrimination of characters : " Murray," says he, " must have long
trafficked in villany, as he had long maintained a connexion with her [Elizabeth], before he
could have risen to such a pitch of familiarity, with the evil spirit within her as to think of making
her such an overture — but he knew her too well, to be afraid of any virtuous resentment from her.
Associates in enormity always pay that compliment to goodness, to have the strongest contempt for
oneanother." But having to dispraise Elizabeth, for her intimacy with Murray, he introduces a note
in the very same page from the French minister Fenelon, to shew, that instead of the contempt
she might be expected to have felt for such a villain, she shut herself up in her chamber on hearing
of his death, very seriously lamenting his loss, as indeed she had reason to do. Elizabeth never is
right, with Mary's friends, especially in comparison with the latter. The tears shed by the former,
are'judged by them to have been but the expressions of concern and vexation for the loss of
an accomplice in cruelty and wickedness ; whereas nothing but mercy and piety could shine through
all the actions of Mary. " La Reine Marie," says one of her encomiasts, " n' apprit point avec
joie la mort de son persecuteur. Son ame pieuse et sensible ne parut frappe que d'une mort si
soudaine, qu'il n' avoit pas eu le temps de se repentir de ses crimes envers Dieu, sa patrie, et sa
soeur, ella donna des larmes a sa mort, s'occupa du salut d' un homme qui 1' avoit traite avec
tant de barbarie, et demanda & Dieu, pour lui, miseiicorde et clemence." And yet there is no
event in history better certified, than that Mary had projected his assassination on his return to
Scotland in 1568.
524 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
of which the following is a remarkable specimen : "He was," says Archbishop
Spottiswood, « a man truly good, and worthy to be ranked amongst the best
governors that this kingdom [Scotland] hath enjoyed, and therefore to this day
honoured with the title of the GOOD REGENT." It is true, we are told that the
word " Good" in this instance, does not mean good in its common sense, but
glide or " godly ;" and that rather as a nickname to mark his connexion with the
Scottish Reformers; the godly set, as they were rather scornfully called by their
opponents ; but surely Archbishop Spottiswood at all events knew, that whether
it meant " good" or " godly," in English or Scotch, it was adopted in praise of
him, as Regent or Governor of the realm ; and certainly, from all we have read,
we are quite disposed to think, that if he were overpraised by some, he was
shamefully calumniated by others. Instead of crowding our pages however
with formal references to the several authors who have spoken ill or well of this
celebrated Statesman, and whose contradictions of each other, as proofs of party
spirit, it has been quite painful to us to peruse and compare, we are happy to
be able to refer the reader to a modern work, often before cited, McCrie's Life of
Knox, where may be seen a long note upon the subject, marked W, vol. ii. p. 332.
concluding with two testimonies in his favour, which we think it would be very
difficult wholly to set aside.
The one is the character given of him by the celebrated French historian
De Thou, [Thuanus], in reply to Camden ; collected from the concurrent
opinions of the friends and enemies of the Regent while he was alive, and with
whom that celebrated historian had actually conferred on the subject ; on the
strength of the information he had thus personally obtained, and in defiance of
all calumniators, he pronounces him to have been " a man without ambition,
without avarice, incapable of doing an injury to any one, distinguished by his
virtue, affability, beneficence, and innocence of life ! " It is true, some say, his
character latterly was much altered, but if we attend to the professed advocates
of Mary he was never good ; always artful, intriguing, ambitious, and even
blood-thirsty ! an apostate, a rebel, a murderer, and we know not what beside.
The other testimony publicly borne to his virtues, is the inscription on his
Monument in the old Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh, and which asserts it to
have been erected, " by his grieving country, as to a common father." — An
inscription of which, surely, the best of Kings might have been proud ; and
indeed he was the son of a King who possessed many amiable qualities, and,
as we have shewn in our first volume, stands commemorated in his native king-
1570.J MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 525
dom and country, as " The poor man's friend." Mary is also said to have been
naturally amiable, and perhaps from the flow of the same royal blood in her veins,
but unhappily, with a mixture of Guisian blood, which did her no service, in
the then state of Europe, and particularly in Scotland and England. ' It was
good blood, as far as regarded the shining qualities of bravery, talents, high
spirit, and courtly manners ; but tinctured with bigotry, insatiable ambition,
a hatred of the Reformation and all Reformers, and a blind devotion to the see
of Rome — so fatally distinguished from each other were the brother and sister
of one and the same father. It was the fate of Murray however to become so
prominent an actor in the Marian Tragedy, during which, it must be confessed,
he was continually in habits of intercourse or correspondence with Lord
Burghley, that we cannot help acknowledging ourselves to have been under
some serious anxiety, to rescue his fame, as far as possible, consistently with
truth, from the venomous shafts and bitter malice of his most inveterate enemies,
the modern advocates of Mary. As a Statesman it was impossible for Lord
Burghley not to have had much to do with Murray, let his character have been
what it might, and we may surely be allowed to add, that considering the great
object at stake, the real and essential interests of Scotland were undoubtedly
safer in Murray's hands than they could have been in those of Mary and her
foreign connexions.
On the Earl of Murray's death, intrigues were set on foot in Scotland to
unite all parties against England ; while on the part of England, of course,
great anxiety was shewn to prevent a union which threatened to be fatal to
the repose of the southern half of the island, and to procure a new Regent to
be appointed, attached to the King's Government and the alliance with England;
an object that seemed to be accomplished by the appointment of the Earl of
Lennox, the King's grandfather, to that high station. But to return.—
The bull of Pius V., of which we had occasion to speak, and which was
speedily and ably answered by Bishop Jewel, found also at this time another
zealous opponent, in the person of the very celebrated and amiable Swiss
Minister, Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, who undertook the defence of Elizabeth
and the whole realm ; and with such admirable success and strength of argument,
that though it was judged in some degree imprudent to make the bull too
generally known, Bullinger's defence was afterwards printed and published.
In the mean while a letter was sent to him, written by the Secretary's great
friend, Cox, Bishop of Ely, who told him, " That the Queen should know his
526 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
good- will to her and her kingdom ; and that he would take care, that she, who
well understood both Latin and Greek, should take a pleasant taste of his
book."* The whole letter, copied from the original at Zurich, may be seen in
Strype, among the papers at the end of the first volume of his Annals, marked H ;
and an able account is given in the text, of some of the chief heads of Bullinger's
answer ; which, in fact, reaches back to the commencement of our English
Reformation, plainly shewing how closely Elizabeth was treading ia the steps
of her worthy brother King Edward VI.
It seems to be the peculiar lot of statesmen in power, to derive credit, and
perhaps the most just as well as the highest credit, from the very abuses heaped
upon them by the enemies of themselves and their country. From the enume-
ration we have given above, of the complicated designs on foot against the
Queen and her dominions, it may easily be supposed, that the particular Coun-
sellors who, in defence of both, exerted their talents to thwart such dangerous
purposes, must have become the most prominent object of the resentment of their
adversaries. To hasten the downfal and destruction of any ancient building,
what so sure or so necessary as to get the buttresses removed? This may be
said to have been the case with the Court of England, at tnis time ; it became a
great and continual subject of complaint, that the Queen was surrounded with
evil Counsellors, and' it can be no wonder that the most vigilant, wise, and
faithful of those Counsellors should be among the first to incur such obloquy.
In the month of May, of this year, certain libellous publications, professing to
come from Scotland, whither the Queen had found it necessary to send an army,
or at least to the frontiers of that disturbed country, f were put forth, and circu-
" Equidcm diligentissime curabo, ut Regina nostra, et Grsece et Latinc doctissima, intelligat
tuam erga ipsam studium et benevolentiam ; effieiamque ut tui libelli gustum capiat suavissimum ."
Cox, speaking of the bull, against which Bullinger had so ably written, calls it " terrificam illam
bullam, quavis bulla vaniorem."
t Upon the murder of Murray, a party of Scottish borderers under Thomas Ker of Fernihurst,
and Walter Scot of Buccleugh. broke into England and committed great ravages, meaning to
provoke a war with Elizabeth, which Mary's party judged to be the surest way to unite Scotland ;
but this was artfully turned aside by Elizabeth, who declined resenting it as a national affront,
and sent Randolph to say so, urging the King's party to support the Protestant Church, and
existing government. If there were trick in this, (see Gilbert Stuart, ii. pp. 1, -2.) it could only
be regarded, as in other cases, as trick for trick. It gave Elizabeth a power and opportunity of
sending forces into Scotland to strengthen the King's party, at the very time that the opposite
party was prepared to attack them ; being encouraged thereto by a French Minister Verac who
1670.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 537
lated with no small diligence, denouncing by name the four following eminent
and distinguished Statesmen : the Lord Keeper (Bacon), Secretary CECIL, Sir
Walter Mildmay, and Sir Ralph Sadler. These great men were represented to
be the causes of all the dangers of which they complained; that they misgoverned
the state and abused their Sovereign. It is possible for ourselves, though we
come so much after them, to judge perhaps more correctly of these charges, than
those who set them on foot ; even if they had not been particularly interested in
putting a false colouring on the acts of the English ministry, which those who
are versed in English history must know to have been the case ; had they been
only abusing their Sovereign, misgoverning the state, and miscalculating the
dangers with which both were threatened, we might well ask, How has it hap-
pened, that the reign of Elizabeth should have been ever since regarded as the
particular sera of English glory ? We might well wonder how it came to pass,
that the fame of these evil-disposed Counsellors,* should continue to our own
days, while the very names of their detractors have, generally speaking, long
sunk into oblivion. Mere detraction, however, was not sufficient ; for in the
county of Norfolk, a regular rebellion was upon the eve of breaking out, in
which it was actually proposed to seize the persons of the Lord Keeper, and his
brother-in-law, Secretary CECIL, and to invite the Duke of Alva to invade the
kingdom. As this rebellion was checked, we need not enter into the particulars,
much less enlarge upon it, especially as Strype, and other historians, have
given a sufficient account of it; but we must observe, that it was rather to the
credit of the inhabitants of that great county, that they should have taken so
lively an interest, as seems to have been the case, in the fate of the Duke, who
took his title from thence ; for though a very mistaken and imprudent man in
regard to his own concerns, he was on many accounts a Nobleman highly to be
respected. It might be absurd to say, or to pretend, that this was the cause of
the projected rebellion ; but it is very certain that the people of Norfolk strongly
resented the imprisonment of that unfortunate Nobleman, and looked to his
always pretended to be sent to reconcile matters, but whose real design was to overthrow the
King's friends, and ultimately Elizabeth. We have before referred to Rapin's account of this
manoeuvre. — Had Elizabeth resented the incursion as an act of the nation, Verac might have suc-
ceeded in uniting both parties against England, but only as a preparative for the introduction of
French and Spanish forces, and the excitement of the Catholics in both parts of the island. The
English troops, under Sussex in the east, and Sir William Drury in the west, took a severe
(indeed too severe a) revenge, burning and destroying many villages and castles.
• Strype, speaking of the animosity of the Papists towards the Secretary, calls him, "The Queen's
faithful and able Counsellor, who, for his wisdom and stability to religion, was hated by them."
528 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
release as one great object of their movements.* He was in truth much to be
pitied, as having fallen, inadvertently as it would seem, into a vortex of most
suspicious intrigues. The sum however of the projected Norfolk rebellion seems
to have been, " to destroy the Queen's person, to imprison the Lord Keeper, the
Earl of Leicester,")" and Secretary CECIL, to set at liberty the Duke of Norfolk,
and banish all strangers."
While one party (if a whole host of widely dispersed enemies may be called
one party) was loading the Secretary with the heaviest abuse, as an enemy both
to his country and his Sovereign, there were not wanting those, who viewed his
conduct in a totally different light, who knew how to appreciate properly his
extreme vigilance and circumspection, and his patriotic jealousy of one of Eng-
land's greatest enemies. This appeared, from a book published about this time,
by a very eminent scholar, Dr. Wylson, a civilian, and who afterwards became
* The following letter from the Duke himself to the Secretary, August 5, 1570, might induce
some surprise, that the latter should be so much an object of their resentment. It may be the
more proper to notice it, as there is a letter to be seen in Lodge, vol. ii. No. liii. addressed to the
Countess of Shrewsbury, giving an account of the trial of the conspirators, in which the Secretary
is stated to have been accused of being the author of the Duke's imprisonment, by a relative of
the name of Thomas Sicell. The truth probably is, that as far as he could, consistently with his
duty, alleviate the sufferings of the Duke, he was never backward to do so.
" The Duke of Norfolk to Secretary Cecill. (Haynes, 601.)
" How great friendship I have received at your hands, good Mr. Secretary, you shall perceive
at our next meeting ; which I assure shall never be forgotten of my part. I pray God that at any
time occasion may serve, that you may perceive how ready I will be to requite the same ; my
mind nor my health requireth any further liberty than I already enjoy: I think myself most bound
to her Majesty for the same. It is no small comfort to me to be rid out of yonder pestilent
infectious houses, which I fear will grow worse before it mend. And so committing the rest to
the credit of this bearer, with my most hearty commendations to your good Lady, who, I dare
undertake, is not less glad of this my ease of liberty, with most hearty commendations and thanks
to yourself, I end this 5th of August."
"Yours never more beholden,
" To my loving friend Sir William Cycell, Knt., " NORFOLK."
principal Secretary to the Queen's Majesty."
f This may perhaps have been the cause of the movements at Kenilworth, which Leicester
began now to fortify, and to replenish with arms and other instruments of defence. " Thei say
my Lord of Leicester hathe many workemen at Kyllingeworthe to make his howse stronge, and
doth furnish it with armour, munition, and all necessaries for defence." — Letter to the Countess of
Shrewsbury, August 31, 1570. Lodge, ii. 45. — Some however have supposed he had it in view
to resent and interrupt the proceedings on foot for the marriage of the Queen, of which we shall
soon have to speak.
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 529
Secretary of State. His work consisted of a translation of some of Demosthenes'
Orations,* directed against the tyranny and overbearing interference of Philip
of Macedon, many passages of which were judged to be strikingly applicable
to the particular circumstances in which England stood at that time, and the
danger to be apprehended from his namesake of Spain ; and the book, on these
accounts, was very seasonably and properly dedicated, in a long epistle, to Sir
William CECIL, the " learned Secretary," as the author himself calls him, and
to whom he had previously sent a copy for his judgment, before he ventured to
publish it. In the title-page it was stated to be " most needful that these Ora-
tions should be made public, that in such dangerous days they might be read of
all men that loved their country's liberty, and were desirous of taking warning
for their better avail by the example of others ;" and the more to elucidate the
purport of this title-page, he thus speaks of the Grecian Orator in another part
of his book : " He that loveth his country, and desireth to procure the welfare
of it, let him read Demosthenes, and he shall not want matter to do himself
good. For he that seeketh common quietness, Demosthenes can teach him his
lesson. He that would gladly prevent evil to come, Demosthenes is for his pur-
pose. He that desireth to serve his country abroad, let him read Demosthenes
day and night, for this is he that is able to make him fit to do any service for
his country's welfare ; for never did glass so truly represent a man's face as
Demosthenes doth shew the world to us. And as it was then, so it is now, and
will be so still, till the consummation and end of all things."
The Secretary could not escape trouble from the course of domestic affairs,
any more than from the disturbances of Europe at large. — His high office of
Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, exposed him greatly to the remon-
strances, and counter-remonstrances, of the Puritans and their opponents. The
celebrated Thomas Cartwright began now to take a very prominent part, not
only against the ceremonies and discipline of the Church, but against the go-
vernment of it ; objecting, in no very measured terms, to the ministerial dis-
tinctions; as of Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, &c. — declaring, that they were
* In which he appears to have made great use of the very elegant Latin translation by Sir
John Cheke, the Secretary's learned relative, of whom we have had so much to say in our former
Volume. In Dr.Wylson's book, great commendations are justly bestowed upon him ; and a saying
of Sir John is specially recorded, with regard to Demosthenes, to the following effect—" That
none ever was more fit to make an Englishman tell his tale praiseworthily in any open hearing,
either in parliament, pulpit, or otherwise, than this orator alone was."
VOL. II. 3 Y
530 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
all no better than " officla et nomina impietatis," offices and names of impiety.
Various other objections were started, and not a little encouraged, so that the
Secretary was urged by the heads of the University over which he presided,
and by the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Chaderton, in particular, to look to these
things ; the conclusion of the Vice Chancellor's address to the Secretary, is in
the following terms : " Jesus Christ, for his infinite mercy's sake, deliver us in
these dangerous days, and grant YOU long life and power to be a patron of his
glory." Grindal also, now Archbishop of York, wrote to the Secretary, urging
him to take a speedy course against Cartwright ; and to devise some means of
silencing him, lest the youth there should be corrupted.* The Chancellor was
not inattentive to these communications, but Cartwright was not very easily to
be silenced, his party in the place being very strong, and himself a man of
very considerable talents. We have before endeavoured to express our sense of
the impropriety of this opposition to the settled state of the Church ; had the
great revolution on foot been, as the Papists pretended, an attempt to set up
an entirely new Church, and introduce novelties, in discharge of all that was
ancient or approved, either in the doctrine or discipline of the Church of Rome,
the case might have been different. As good and anxious subjects of the state,
upon such an emergency, those who had imbibed a fondness for the Helvetian
principles, might have been justified in at least offering their opinions as to the
precise form of the new Church ; but as the true spirit of the English Reforma-
tion was, to preserve as well as discard; to restore what had been departed
from, rather than to break all union whatsoever, and to fix on a standard of
authority which none could dispute, but which could not in reason be said of
any merely human authority, the great question was, how much might be
harmlessly retained ?f It is vain to attempt to deny that Episcopacy had sub-
* See this letter in Collier, ii. 525, introduced there, as the author states, to clear that most
reverend Prelate from all imputations of Puritanism.
t " Malgre 1'opposition qui existoit entre les principes de 1'Eglise Catholique et ceux de
1'Eglise Anglicane, la prudence d'Elizabeth, avoit conduit la Reformation d'une maniere plus
moderee qn'on ne 1'avoit fait en aucun pays de 1'Europe. La hierarchic, la liturgie, les cere-
monies anciennes trammines d'dge en tfge depuis les premiers sticks de 1'Eglise, et consacrees par la
veneration des peuples, avoient ete conservees, a quelques legers changemens pres dans, les formes,
qui ne pouvoient subsister en entier, puisque le fond n'etoit plus le m£me."— Mad'", de Keralio.
The same writer, speaking of those who objected to the habits, ceremonies, and hierarchy, says,
" Imitateurs de Calvin, ils vouloieut ramener la Reformation a la grossierete des aiecles bar-
tares."
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 531
sisted in the Church from the earliest days,* nor was it the Episcopal character
of the Pope that was objected to by the English Reformers, but his assumption
of an universal over-ruling inspection and authority, above all other Bishops,
as Bishop of Rome. The contest seemed therefore to be reduced to this simple
question, what might lawfully be retained, on the footing of the Scriptures, and
the primitive forms of Church government? Now, as this remains a question,
even to the present times, between Episcopalians and Presbyterians, we cer-
tainly need not enter into the dispute, further than to say, that those who, at the
time of which we are writing, decided in favour of Episcopacy, had a just right so
to do, as well as to assign the boundary where all necessary reformation might
stop. In separating from Rome, the Church of England was under no obliga-
tion to take her model from Geneva, or any other country ; and therefore to
endeavour to force the platform of the former upon the nation, to the overthrow
of the retained hierarchy, was certainly a violent, not to say an audacious step.
It cannot however be denied, that on both sides much talent was displayed ;
Cartwright himself being a man of great learning and eminence. He had dis-
tinguished himself at Cambridge, when the Queen visited that University in the
year 1564, and in the present year had been chosen the Lady Margaret's Reader
in Divinity. Unfortunately, in one of the earliest of his lectures, he entered
largely into the subject of Church discipline, wherein he displayed so strong a
bias against the established hierarchy, as very naturally to stir up considerable
dissensions, and throw the whole University into a flame, though very respect-
able testimonials were certainly obtained, of the temperate manner in which he
urged his objections.!
* David Blondel's book, entitled, " Apologia pro SententiaSancti Hieronymi de Presbyteris et
Episcopis," though written in favour of Presbyterianism, closes with the following passage :
" By all that we have said to assert the rights of Presbytery, we do not intend to invalidate the
ancient and apostolical constitution of Episcopal pre-eminence; but we believe, that whereso-
ever it is established, conformably to the ancient canons, it must be carefully preserved ; and
wheresoever, by some heat of contention or otherwise, it hath been put down or violated, it ought
to be reverently restored." Blondel's book was brought forward by the Scottish Presbyterians, at
the Westminster Assembly, but the passage above suppressed; which causing ;i great camour,
induced John Blondel. the author's brother, then in London, to write to David about it, who
acknowledged the passage to be genuine.
f Strype's Annals, vol. ii. part i. p. 2., and see p. 3. an abstract of Cartwright's own letter
to Cecil, accompanying the above testimonials. The letter itself, in elegant Latin, may be seen
in Strype's Appendix.
532 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
The high situation of Chancellor appears constantly to have involved the
Secretary in these disputes :* appeals were poured in upon him from both sides,
and he was called upon to decide upon points which fell not very regularly
under his cognizance, f It is impossible to read his letters, or reflect upon the
course he judged it right to pursue, without being struck with the diffidence
with which he approached the subject, the great concern he appears to have
felt that it should so much disturb the peace of the society over which he had
to preside, and the candour and moderation with which he seemed anxious to
treat those who, by an excess of zeal, were in danger of transgressing the laws.
He so far, however, interposed, as to forbid Cartwright any more discussing
these questions in his lectures and sermons till further order ; prohibiting, at
the same time, the other party from doing the like.
All that passed upon this occasion, in the course of the present year (1570),
is so circumstantially recorded in Strype's Annals, Collier's, and other histories,
that it is unnecessary to go at large into the subject here ; it may be sufficient to
observe, that the contention ran so high, as to terminate in the removal of Cart-
wright from his Readership in Divinity, and soon after from his Fellowship in
Trinity College. £ The sum of his particular and avowed tenets is to be found in
sir Propositions signed by him, and forwarded to the Chancellor by Whitgift, then
Vice Chancellor,^ and other Heads of Houses [Annals of the Reformation under
* He was, however, earnestly requested to exert himself also in behalf of the Irish Church,
where the cures were said to be ill supplied, in consequence of the numerous impropriations in
the hands of the Crown. The Archbishop of Dublin expressly wrote to him upon this. See
Collier, ii. 528.
f The decision of the matter he left a good deal to the Heads of Colleges, but so far from
declining to examine into it, as far as he reasonably could, he particularly requested Whitgift to
supply him with a statement of Cartwright's peculiar tenets, and much encouraged that learned
divine to answer and confute such as he judged objectionable. The letters addressed to the
Chancellor may be seen in the Appendix to the 2d volume of Strype's Annals.
J Strype's Annals, ch. i. vol. ii. p. 5. The judicial proceedings may be seen in the Appendix
to Strype's Life of Whitgift, No. ix.
§ In Strype's Life of Whitgift, b. i. ch. iv. (and in his Life of Parker, b. iv. ch. iv.) may be
seen an account of the new statutes framed at this time for the University of Cambridge, with
the Chancellor's consent. These new statutes gave great offence to the Puritanical party, one of
whom, a man of good name and family, Edward Dering, sometime Fellow of Christ's College,
took upon him greatly to censure.Whitgift for the part he had taken in them, and even the
Chancellor, for allowing them, in a letter particularly addressed to the latter ; which may be seen
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY, 533
Q. Elizabeth, ch. Ivii. p. 380.], and in twenty additional and very censurable
articles, pp. 381, 382. [See Collier.] The name of Puritan, it may be observed,
bestowed on this party, of which Cartwright was the head, was designed to
refer as much to their outward personal demeanour, as to the strictness of their
discipline, or any peculiarity of doctrine. Whitgift, the great opponent of
Cartwright, and afterwards Archbishop, compares them with the Pharisees, from
their studied austerity of manners, their straining at little things,* and their rude
contempt of those who differed from them. But for the general manners of
his followers and adherents, Cartwright would not acknowledge himself to be
responsible. f
In the course of this year a negotiation was set on foot for the Queen's
marriage with the Due d'Anjou, brother »f the King of France ; Cecil, in a letter
to Walsingham, at Paris, expresses his private opinion to be, generally speaking,
that " he saw no continuance of the Queen's quietness without a marriage."
And this, indeed, he might well say, the chances of the succession, after her
death without issue, being made a continual trouble to her, especially by those
who wished to have Mary Queen of Scots' title openly and publicly allowed ;
in the Appendix to Strype's Life of Parker, No. 78 ; see also Collier, ii.' 537, and for some of
Bering's peculiar tenets, see ib. p. 532. In bis letter to the Chancellor are some odd passages :
" You have of late sent unrighteous statutes to Cambridge. — I am sorry, Sir William Cecill, that
you cannot see ; the Lord send you clear eyes that you once delight in the beauty of his temple."
— " I do wish you well neither for your gold nor silver, nor for your great authority, because
you can give me living, but because you have professed the Gospel, are a Magistrate in the Com-
monwealth where Christ is truly preached, and yet now do sustain much hatred of the enemy. "—
There is a good deal of honest sincerity in the letter, as well as of godly zeal, had it been but
rightly directed, or better tempered.
* They were also called Precisians by Archbishop Parker, who had a great deal of trouble
with them. See his Life by Strype.
f It is certainly remarkable, that while the Puritans were inveighing against the Church govern-
ment established by Elizabeth, and reproaching her for retaining the Romish hierarchy of Bishops,
&c., Pope Pius's Bull anathematises her for forsaking the Church of Rome, and admitting the
impious mysteries and institutions of Calvin, to the overthrow of Bishops, &c. This mistake is rather
remarkable, and we do not remember to have seen it noticed elsewhere as it deserves to be.
The Bull had an eye also to the " evil Counsellors" of her Majesty, that is, her Protestant
ministers, Bacon, Cecil, &c., whom it styles, in contradiction to the Catholic nobility, obscure
men, as well as heretics. — The Bull may be seen in the Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth,
vol. i. 374«. Concern, speaking of the Earl of Arran's retirement from the French Court to
Geneva, calls the latter, " Omnium sordium commune receptaculum."
5.34 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1,570.
but the agitation of the subject set, it seems, the astrologers to work, who
calculated the Queen's nativity, in order from thence to draw prognostics of what
might be expected to ensue from such a marriage if it should take place. We
cannot deny that this appeal to the vain science of astrology (the folly of the age,
as Strype calls it), is strongly reported to have been set on foot by the Secretary,
and absolutely to have been resorted to by that extraordinary man as a guide and
direction to his own judgment.* The calculation happens to be still extant,
written by the Secretary, propria manu, beginning De signijicatione 7ma! domus,
et de conjugio. The whole, indeed, may be seen in the Appendix to the second
volume of Strype's Annals of the Reformation, No. iv.; one clause, as bearing
upon the succession, is ridiculously curious. There was a hope to be drawn, it
seems, of the birth of one son, that should be strong, famous, and happy in
his mature age. " Verum Venus est in domo propria, coiyuncta Mercurio,
domino Jiliorum. Et idcirco spes maxima datur dejilio uno robusto, claro, et
felici in estate sita matura." The prognostics, however, of happiness, and a
robust heir of her own body, were not sufficient to induce the Queen to venture
herself within the indissoluble bonds of wedlock ; one" daughter also seems
to have been promised, from the moon being in the constellation Taurus. —
" Luna in Tauro unamjiliam designat."
In the month of September of this year, Sir William was commissioned
by the Queen, in company with Sir Walter Mildmay, to hold a conference with
her unfortunate prisoner, the Queen of Scots, then at Chatsworth, and to enter
into negotiation with her upon certain articles, in order, if possible, " to satisfy
and accord the differences" between them. Sir William is known to have
expressed the concern it gave to both these eminent Ministers to be sent upon so
unpleasant an errand, knowing, perhaps, that little good could come of it
one way or the other ;f it being impossible to devise such securities as should
keep quiet the friends of Mary and enemies of Elizabeth. It is continually said
* See the account of the Dutch astronomer, Bomelitis, in the Life of Parker, ii. 1, 2, 3, 4.
book iv. ch. i.
t There never certainly was a case, the details of which were so liable to perverse interpreta-
tions as this of Mary Queen of Scots. Mail"6, de Keralio would have the repugnance of Cecil to
undertake this mission to be the greatest proof of her perfect innocence. " Cecill, sous les yeux
duquel s'eloit faite In procedure des conferences, d'York et de Westminster, qui avoit eu lettres
de Marie, trembloit de paroitre d ses yeux .'" with more to the same effect. We believe the dis-
quietude of the two Ministers arose from very different causes, in fact, from the despair o' doing
any good.
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 53,1)
that Elizabeth was always insincere in entering upon these treaties with Mary ;
that they never were encouraged by her but to gain time, or make a show of amity
to satisfy the Ministers of foreign powers who were soliciting her enlargement.
We cannot pretend to say that it was altogether otherwise; but we do not
agree with the advocates of Mary in imputing this to a settled purpose of keep-
ing the latter in custody, in mere resentment of her pretensions to the English
crown, or to gratify the low passions of spite, envy, and malice, by a perpetual
incarceration, in order to torment and persecute a fallen and helpless rival. We
are certain that if Elizabeth could, with any prudence, have set her free, she
would gladly have done it; she would herself have been relieved by it from
many most tormenting cares and daily apprehensions ; nor should it be
forgotten that there was always a party in Scotland to whom she might have
been delivered, but probably to undergo worse than she was suffering under the
charge of Lord Shrewsbury.* Again, if Elizabeth was insincere, "f she had
to practise upon two people the least likely in the world to be abused by
her insincerity; Mary, who never cordially trusted her, though she professed to
do so, and the Bishop of Ross, who knew both Queens too well to be deceived
by either of them ; who would have helped Mary if he could, but was very
sensible that she put too much trust in the known enemies of Elizabeth, and who,
* So little like a degraded Queen does she appear to have been treated at this time, that in the
account written to the Queen of their first recepiion, the Commissioners describe Mary as being
" in her Privy Chamber, under her cloth of estate," and with many attendants as it would appear,
as in the next audience she is described as retiring into a private gallery, whence she secluded her
company all but four. In a letter to " the Secretaries," in Howard's Collection, p. 376, from one
of the English ministers at Paris, it is observed, " the Papists here, and the Scottish Bishops do
praise the Earl of Shrewsbury to be a high friend of the Queen of Scots, for bis well using her;"
it is without date.
t It appears from a minute of the Secretary, still in existence, that after Murray's death, a
resolution was taken at Hampton Court, " to return home the Queen of Scots." See Ilaynes,
579. What this exactly meant we do not pretend to say ; the date is March 10, 1569, which, as
it follows some letters written after Murray's assassination, we conclude to mean March 10, 1570,
according to the present reckoning. One letter preceding this minute, evidently written three days
only after Murray's death, and dated 26th of January, 1570, is from the celebrated Scotch Secre-
tary Maitland, to Sir William Cecil, in which, though he had not joined the King's party,
he writes, " You know of old what reverence I bear to your person, and how highly I do esteem
your judgment, which maketh me to submit mine unto yours ; so that I am rather to be
directed by you, (if you find any aptness in me) than trouble you with any thing I can
invent."
536 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
if they ever should serve her, it would be only to answer purposes, as he
frequently told her, of their own*
Of the negotiation generally, an account may be seen in Haynes, p. 608, &c.,
where all the articles delivered by Sir William and Sir Walter Mildmay, with
Mary's answers and requests, may be read at large, with a further account of the
suspension of the treaty, in consequence of letters received from the King's
Commissioners in Scotland. It is enough for the purposes of this history
to know, that the unhappy Queen gave due credit to Elizabeth's two great
Ministers for the feeling and respectful manner in which they conducted them-
selves towards her,f nor was she destitute of help at the time, as the Bishop of
Ross appears to have been present at all the conferences.
Dr. Stuart says, " During their stay at Chatsworth, these statesmen were
entirely satisfied with the behaviour of the Queen of Scots ; the candour,
sincerity, and moderation which she displayed, were full assurances to them
that upon her part there was no occasion to apprehend any improper policy or
art ; and the calamities of her condition were a still securer pledge of her com-
pliance." We have no wish to dispute a single word of this passage, but
the great question was, could there be any certain security in Mary's compliance
alone? Was not the Pope at hand to absolve her from all pledges, and Catholic
armies ready to dissolve by force all securities, if they could once get her into
their possession ? We have copies besides of the accounts rendered to the Queen
by Sir William Cecil and Sir Walter, of the conferences held with Mary, and
written on the very days they took place. They are certainly very interesting
and very affecting ; but they do not evince that confidence altogether in Mary's
sincerity that Dr. Stuart speaks of, at least as to things past. Thus, they
expressed to her, in answer to her frequent, declarations of intending Elizabeth
no harm at any time, their suspicions that she knew of the rebellion in the north
the last year. " We found her most troubled and amazed with that we charged
* According to Dr. Stuart we must except Charles IX., who is said to have been attached
to his accomplished sister-in-law; and who, early in 1570, had sent the celebrated M. Verac,
of whom we have spoken, into Scotland, to procure her help.
t " We found the Bishop of Ross, in many things, by his words and advices to her, very ready
both to move her to assent and to allow of her answers to our contentations ; and, indeed, it seemeth
that in these matters she dependeth much upon his opinion." And in the second letter they speak
of her "being most directed by the Bishop of Ross." In some things they could not prevail at all
to have the articles stand as they were. " We could not, by any persuasion, move either her or the
Bishop to forbear the change in them."
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 537
her to have had intelligence with your Majesty's rebels; she would not deny that
she understood divers things from them,* but they never had comfort from her:
and charging her that she dealt not well in concealing of things uttered to her,
she said, when she used so earnest suit at Bolton to come to your presence, she
meant then to have shewed your Majesty some things that she otherwise could
not do." It does not quite appear why she could not have done it, through her
Minister. In excuse of the Queen's not admitting her to her presence, instead of
harsh reflections, she was only desired to " consider that Princes be like moun-
tains that hardly can meet ; such is the condition of great Princes, that they lack
herein the commodity which private persons enjoy." Stronger reasons might
certainly have been alleged, as they had been by others, but at this time they
were better avoided. There is one very curious passage in the first letter : " She
desired us to hear what she could say in her defence, and also what we could
charge her with also that she might answer. Whereunto we told her that we
had no meaning to charge her with any thing unless by her defence of herself
she would occasion us so to do." There can be no doubt that they had much
to charge her with, as tampering with the enemies of Elizabeth, charges she
could not have satisfactorily answered ; but it was so natural that she should
have done so, however imprudent, that we cannot but admire the two Ministers
for doing all they could to avoid being driven to a necessity of accusing
her. The interviews and conferences, however, from the accounts preserved,
must have been very distressing, as well when she was sorrowful as when she
was more impassioned and vehement in her manner. The reports of the
Commissioners to the Queen, from Chatsworth,f do them credit. There is
nothing in them to make Mary's case worse with Elizabeth ; much, on the
contrary, to move her compassion, had it been possible so to work on a mind,
hardened, as it would seem, by the fatal tendency of the competition between
the two Sovereigns, never to be concealed, and therefore precluding the conces-
sions looked for on the part of Elizabeth.
* How much Mary was a party to this revolt, may be seen in the examination of Hamelyng, by
Sir Francis Knollys and Sir William Cecil ; Haynes, 594. — And yet see how earnestly the Earls of
Northumberland and Westmoreland had admitted the truth of the allegations against Mary, and
the propriety of Elizabeth's refusing to admit Mary to her presence. — Goodall, No. xcv.
f One of the letters to the Queen, dated on the second of October, 1570, concludes thus : " But
in this we mean to prolong no time, for this morning, unlocked for, we have seen winter entered
into these peakish mountains, having a large snow fallen round about us, so as if the weather
follow as it hath begun, we shall wish ourselves away."
VOL. II. 3 Z
538 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
Mary's answers throughout the whole of the negotiation bespeak much
shrewdness ; nor can we forbear to notice the suggested alteration spoken
of elsewhere, of substituting for " any issue" her Majesty might have the words
"any lawful issue;"* a correction the more remarkable, because in the original
article (a manuscript copy of which, belonging to Sir Walter Mildmay, is now,
by the kind indulgence of the Earl of Westmoreland, lying before us) Mary's
children are spoken of quite as generally as Elizabeth's, " with provision for the
Queen of Scots, that thereby she shall not be secluded from any righte or title
that shee or her children may hereafter have if God shall not gyve to the
Q. Maj"* anie yssue of her bodye to have contynuance." This makes the case a
more pointed one, as against Elizabeth, and rather a bold correction to venture
upon, considering who is supposed to have been aimed at besides the Queen.
We cannot help subjoining the following settlement of the case : —
" In the first note" [i. e. Mary's proposed alteration] "to the second article,
these words [Leefull yssue~\ to be changed into issue by any lawfull husband;" to
which Mary acceded ; and it may be observed, that the limitation proposed in
the case of Elizabeth, was allowed to be added to the article, as it concerned
the Queen of Scots [and her lawful issue]. But we have something more to say
upon this head. In the Apethorpe MS., obligingly communicated to us by the
Earl of Westmorland, we find that Elizabeth very well understood the purport
of the alteration proposed ;f for in a letter addressed by her to Sir William
Cecil and Sir Walter Mildmay, at Chatswortb, we find this angry passage : —
" First, when in her [the Q. of Scots] answer to the second article, she
requireth that this word ' Lawful' may be added to the word issue, although
we might take ourself to be herein touched in honour, yet considering she may
peradventure measure other folks dispositions by her own actions, which we
trust in God shall be always far from us, we are content the rather to overpass
in silence, what we have cause to think hereof; and, nevertheless, mean not to
• Leefull.— Scotch.
t This is of importance, as many different opinions have been expressed upon the subject ;
some thinking the term natural quite harmless ; some that it was adopted in the famous statute,
out of prudery. — See Hallam, 160. We believe, in Doctors' Commons, the term natural and
legal child, has often been used for the legitimate offspring. It is plain, however, as we have
shewn in the text, that Elizabeth felt the exception to be an affront. We have endeavoured to
shew that Leicester might have a design to answer by it, after the Queen's death, and when she
could consequently contradict nothing that he might choose to assert.
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 539
yield to her request, but are pleased that, instead of the word ' lawful issue,'
these words may ensue, ' by any lawful husband ; ' for that it falleth out
sometimes that persons do match in marriage with those that before entangled
by some former secret contract unknown to the party that they match withal ;
and because we think not convenient to allow by writing her title in succession
to the crown of this realm, having not at any time for our part entered into the
consideration who hath right thereunto, we have, in her answer to this article,
this word ' pretended.'"
We have always felt surprised that Mary, or her shrewd adviser Leslie, should
have given this provocation to Elizabeth, at the very commencement of this
negotiation ; but it certainly has given us some insight into Elizabeth's opinion
of Mary's character, if not as well of Mary's suspicion of Elizabeth. We may
notice also that the resentment of the latter, as expressed in the paragraph
above, proceeded not merely from herself, but from the Court and Council
surrounding her Majesty at the time, where it is probable that Mary, even
without such provocations, had always greater personal enemies, than either of
the celebrated Ministers sent to her in 1570.* The Queen's letter begins with
stating that every thing had been laid before the Council, the members of which
therefore were as much responsible for the reflections cast on Mary, as Elizabeth
herself — at all events, in this instance, Mary must be allowed to have cast the
first stone, since the limitation proposed had been omitted in her own case, and
the words, besides a most ungracious insinuation, bore hard upon Elizabeth's
own legitimacy, which was not merely disputed, but openly denied by all
Mary's Catholic friends. It is not impossible, after all, but that the whole party,
Mary, the Bishop of Ross, Cecil, and Mildmay, had very reasonable grounds
to suspect that Leicester meant, in case of Elizabeth's death, " to obtrude
some natural son of his own upon the English, for the Queen's natural issue ;"
as Camden remarks, upon the passing the statute in the year ensuing, where the
term " natural issue" was strangely introduced, as we shall have occasion to
shew, and by which, as it is observed in the Secret Memoirs of the Earl of
* In Leicester's letter to Sussex, to be seen in Burnet, and referred to above, he proposes that
" Mary should renounce all such interest or title as she claimet/t, &c. during the life of her
Majesty and the heirs of her body;" and he even asserts, that she had " wholly and frankly"
offered to do so. This letter therefore must have been written before he knew of her proposed
limitation. The Bishop of Ross knew as much of Leicester, as either Sir William Cecil or Sir
Walter Mildmay.
540 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGH LEY. [1570.
*
Leicester, the royal honour of his Sovereign was touched. It is known that he
pretended, in order to put aside the matches proposed to her Majesty from
abroad, that he had been privily contracted to her, of which privy contract he
meant to avail himself in case of her death. The extraordinary circumstance is,
that he should be able to have such terms inserted in an act of Parliament ; but
if we look to the work above referred to, we may be able to judge of the extent of
his influence, and we are ashamed to add (upon such a subject), even in both
Houses of Parliament, and among the Puritans. We grant that the book is the
same in substance as Leicester's Commonwealth, and a most severe work, but
admirably written; and, as it is supposed, not without Lord Burghley's help.*
It is certain, however, that he is reported, in the book itself, to have had as much
in his keeping of Leicester's own hand- writing, as would have been sufficient to
hang him, " if either he durst present the same to her Majesty, or her Majesty
do justice when it should be presented." If Lord Burghley had only counte-
nanced such a collection of charges, to ruin or remove a political rival, it might
reflect much on his honour ; but when it was known that he was perforce made
to act with such a person in the Council and in Parliament, it became almost a
measure of justice to himself and family, to bring forward such real facts as
might fix the responsibility of certain very objectionable transactions on the
right person; and thus, in the case before us, both Cecil and Sir Walter Mildmay
might see reason for the alteration proposed, and be willing to let it pass to the
Council, where, in their absence, probably, Leicester had most weight, and
where the Queen's attention might be drawn to the suspicions of all the party.
Of the extraordinary influence of Leicester, even in the House of Lords, an
indisputable proof may be drawn from the number of proxies constantly sent to
him, as noticed by D'Ewes. He had, indeed, managed to render so many
dependent upon him, and to cause so many to stand in awe of his resentment
of any adverse practices, that whenever, by accident, he was out of favour with
the Queen, she heard nothing but lamentations around her, among all the
dependants of the Court. — Secret Memoirs, p. 58. edit. 1706. " Those who
did not lament," says the memorialist, " afterwards paid sweetly for their mirth."
But to proceed with the negotiation at Chatsworth.
To shew how great attention was paid to the several proposals made on both
sides, we shall transcribe the reasoning of the Queen and Council upon one
' That he was the author of the book, as some have asserted, we cannot believe, from
certain passages in it entirely contrary to his known opinions.
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 54]
alteration proposed by Mary, as it was communicated from the Court to Sir
William and Sir Walter Mildmay.
The fifth article ran thus : —
" The Queen of Scots shall not directly or indirectly receive any intelligence
by or from any subject of England, without the Queen's Majesty's allowance,
or without knowledge to be given to the Queen of England, without delay."*
Mary proposed, that after the words, " any subject of England," should be
inserted, " to the prejudice or disturbance of the Queen Majesty's person or
estate."
In the letter sent by the Queen to Chatsworth, in reply to Mary's requests,
the following judicious opinion occurs in the Apethorpe MS.
" Her addition to the Vth Article gives us great cause to suspect her well-
meaning to us, and our estate, for that she leaveth thereby an interpretation to
herself, whether the intelligence which she may receive by or from any of our
subjects be to the prejudice or disturbance of our person or estate, which if it
should be granted, might be a means to colour any subtle device that might be
practised underhand to the trouble of us and our realm; and therefore her
request herein in no wise to be allowed."
If we consider this remark as bearing upon the transactions of the last year,
during which Mary had personally acknowledged to Sir William Cecil and Sir
Walter Mildmay, that she had had an understanding with the rebels, without
communicating to Elizabeth any thing of their purposes, we cannot but admit
that the Council came to a wise determination ; and in fact, the proposed altera-
tion was withdrawn.
In the Queen's letter to Cecil and Mildmay, from which we have transcribed
the above, are many other excellent observations on the alterations proposed by
Mary (or we should rather perhaps say, the Bishop of Ross), and which might
well serve to shew in how very few words an advantage might be taken over
any unwary negotiators. Thus Mary could easily be brought to consent to the
forfeitures proposed in case she should attempt any thing against the Queen's
right or title, or aid any person so doing, the same being denounced to her, and
she admonished to desist ; but they were for postponing all forfeitures till it
should be ascertained that she had not desisted, according to such denunciation
and admonition ; which was as much as to give her leave to practise against the
* Probably drawn up with a view to Mary's suppression of her intercourse
with the rebels during the last year.
342 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
Queen, till it should happen to be found out. The letter therefore thus
expresseth the opinion of the Queen upon this proposed alteration.
" Her addition to the third article of assurance for the observation of this
treaty we find stronger than any of the rest ; for where she herein desireth it
may be addedj that before the advantage limited by the said article shall be taken
or extended against her, she shall bejirst by our denunciation and admonition
required to desist from the aiding or assisting of any person to deprive or
dispossess us of any parcel of the kingdoms of England and Ireland, or the
members thereof, and from the aiding of any notorious traitor or rebel of
England or Ireland, being in either our dominions or without ; we cannot but
think she hath herein some secret meaning, neither to be well thought of nor
allowed. For she cannot desist from that which she shall not h&vejirst enter-
prised, and to leave her to that liberty that she may take in hand the assisting
of any person or prosecuting any device to our prejudice, until she shall thereof
be admonished from us, cannot but be dangerous to our estate, considering that
the same may be both begun, and peradventure brought to pass, before we shall
get knowledge thereof, and so will it be too late to give warning unto the said
Queen to desist from it in time, and therefore we think that clause in no wise
to be allowed."
This alteration, therefore, was given up ; but there appears to have been
some good reason for attending to it, since the Queen of Scots seems to have
been allowed at the very time to communicate with the Pope, the King of
France, and the Duke of Alva, who concurred in advising her to accept all the
articles proposed to her, but at the same time promising to assist all her adherents
with money, ammunition, and troops, if the treaty should miscarry ; as the
Bishop of Ross had represented to them, that the articles were hard and humi-
liating, yet such as she must sign, without their speedy and effectual assistance
and relief, it would look as if they only counselled her to accept the terms
offered, to comply or not afterwards as she or they might choose.
Not many months after Sir William's mission to Chatsworth, her Majesty
was pleased to advance him to the honours of the Peerage. Whether he was
weary of the Court, where many things must have been continually passing,
very unsuitable to his habits of life and ways of thinking, or not ; he seems to
have taken little pride in his elevation, though, perhaps, no honour could have
been more deservedly conferred, and none, perhaps, were ever more honourably
bestowed. The Queen being particularly sparing of such high distinctions, and
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 543
having, indeed, in the course of twelve years, made only four Barons, Cecil being
one.* Strypes account of this circumstance in the life of the great Statesman,
the subject of this Memoir, is very good, and deserves to be transcribed.
After speaking of Elizabeth's daily occupation of reading Greek, and " con-
versing with ancient authors of Philosophy and Divinity," he proceeds : " One
of this learned Queen's wise Counsellors was Sir William CECIL, her Secretary
of State, learned himself, and also a chief patron of learning and religion :
whom this year she worthily advanced to the honour of a Baron of this kingdom,
by the title of BARON of BURGH LEY, f the name of his noble house in North-
amptonshire ; and still giving title to his eldest son's issue, the Earls of Exeter ;
not advanced for his wealth, but for his worth; but he remained Secretary for
some time after ; though it was thought then (as the Earl of Leicester wrote to
Walsingham) that ere long he should have the office of Privy-seal." If we will
take his title from his own pen, thus he wrote to Nicholas White, his friend in
Ireland : " My style is Lord of Burghlci/,^. if you mean to know it for your
* Camden.and Rapin. " No man," says the latter, " had better deserved than he to receive
this mark of distinction, which was very considerable in the reign of a Queen who conferred
honours with great circumspection." Fuller says much the same : " At last after long service
made Baron of Burghley ; for the Queen honoured her honours, in conferring them sparingly." —
Holy State, p. 256. Kchard speaks of his being " created Lord Burghley, with commendations
answerable to his extraordinary worth and superlative abilities." The following is taken from
the Memoirs of the Court of Elizabeth : " Elizabeth soon after paid homage to merit in another
form, by conferring on her invaluable servant CECIL, — whose wisdom, firmness, and vigilance
had most contributed to preserve her unhurt amid the machinations of her most implacable
enemies,— the dignity of Baron of Burghley ; an elevation which might provoke the envy or
resentment of some of the Courtiers his opponents, but which was hailed by the applauses of the
people." — Vol. ii. p. 4.
t "As he thus continued his care in service, so he grew in favour of his Prince and liking of the
people. And having twelve years served as Secretary, he was by her Majesty created Baron
of Burghley, upon Shrove Sunday, the 25th of February, 1570, [13th Elizabeth,] continuing still
Secretary." — Life by a Domestic.
The Letters-Patent set forth that he was to be ennobled " as well for his long services in the
time of our progenitors Kings of England, as also for the faithful and acceptable duty and obser-
vance which he hath constantly performed from the beginning of our reign, and ceaseth not daily
to perform many ways, not only in the great and weighty affairs of the Counc'l, but generally also
in all other concernments of the realm, and also for his circumspection, valour, wisdom, dexterity,
integrity of life, providence, care, and faithfulness." — Camden, 154.
J In the P. S. of a letter to Walsingham, March 25, 1571, he writes, " My stile of my poor
degree is Lord of Burleigh." — Digges, 72.
544 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
writing, and if you list to write, truly the poorest Lord in England. Yours,
not changed in friendship, though in name, WILLIAM BURGHLEY." And
about the same time he wrote to Walsingham in France, (March 1st, 1570),
subscribing his letter, Your assured, as I was wont, WILLIAM CECIL, and as I
am now ordered to write, WILLIAM BURGHLEY.* And in his own Journal he
wrote, " That he was created Baron on the 25th of February, being Shrove
Sunday : yet called Lord Burghley some time before."!
Among those who particularly congratulated the new created Baron, the
reader, perhaps, will be surprised to find the Bishop of Ross, the principal
minister of Mary Queen of Scots ; and who had so lately been with him at
Chatsworth ; his words are these : " When I was going to write your Lordship's
accustomed style of honour, I was warned of your late honourable promotion,
whereof 1 am most heartily glad. For your virtue, wisdom, and experience has
merited that, and much more, and happy is that commonwealth where the
magistrates are so selected ; et auum out sapientes gubernant, aut gubernantes
philosophantur."'^.
If the Secretary wrote, or seemed to write, carelessly about his new honours,
of which many would have been more proud, we may probably attribute it to
the very perplexed state of public affairs, which appear to have much harassed
his mind. In a letter to the same friend in Ireland, of whom we have just made
mention, after Strype, who indeed supplies us with many important particulars
at this period of Lord Burghley's life, he writes as follows : "I cannot well re-
solve what to write, such are the varieties and changes of time, that may alter
my advertisements between my writing and your receipt. Therefore I will
write of things not subject to change by me while I live. I do continue, nor
will desist, to love heartily the honest virtues which I am persuaded are settled
and rooted in you ; for which I love you, and so will, except you make the
change. I am as you have known me (if not more) tormented with the blasts
• One of his letters to Sir Francis Walsingham, April 14, 1571, ends thus,
" Your assured loving friend, William Cecill.
" I forgot my new word, William Burleigh."
f At the time Sir William was called to the Upper House, it appears from Willis's Notitia
Parliament aria that he represented the two counties of Lincoln and Northampton; his eldest son,
Mr. Thomas Cecil, being at the same time member for Stamford, and his younger son, Mr.
Robert Cecil, also in Parliament.
I Ross was at this time in custody of the Bishop of London. See a curious account of him in
Strype's Grindal, 222.
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 545
of the world: willing to live in calm places; but it pleaseth God otherwise to
exercise me, in sort as I cannot shun the rages thereof: though his goodness
preserveth me, as it were with the target of his providence, from the dangers
that are gaping upon me. Vita hominis est militia super terram. I use no
armour of proof against the dart and the pellat, but confidence in God by a clear
conscience." " He was a man," continues Strype, " that affected meditation
and retirement, but could not be spared from the public." For to repeat one ex-
pression more, dropped in the same letter, " God send me some intermission
from business, to meditate privately upon his marvellous works, and to exercise
my thankfulness for his mercies and benefits."
About the time that Lord Burghley was made a Peer, Sir Nicholas Throck-
morton died, at the house of his patron Lord Leicester, not without suspicions
of poison ;* his death was certainly sudden and unexpected ; in Cecil's Diary
he is said to have died ex pleurisi et peripneumonia ; and the same account is
given in a letter to Walsingham, wherein the Secretary observes, " He doth
but lead the way to us, whereof I for my part have had sufficient schooling, by
my present sickness;" which sickness indeed (being a fit of the gout) seems to
have been very severe, from several letters in Digges's Compleat Ambassador,
in one of which he writes to Walsingham, " If my sickness alone were con-
sidered, or my irksome business laid thereto perused, I cannot think but you
would excuse my not writing with my own hand, or any long letter by my en-
diting of the hand of another. You shall perceive by the Queen's Majesty's
letters, what I have been enforced with some pain to indite by reason of my
restless sickness and business." From the date of this letter it is probable he
was labouring under this severe attack of gout, when he was made a Peer. But
to return to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. Lord Leicester, to whom his death has
been imputed, says (in a letter to Walsingham) that " his lungs were perished."
Strype describes him to have been a busy intriguing man; which indeed seems
to have been his true character, not only while Minister in France, but elsewhere.
Sir Francis Walsingham, however, an excellent judge, seems to have had a high
opinion of his talents ; " For counsel in peace, and for conduct in war," says
he, in a letter to Leicester, " he hath not left of like sufficiency his successor
• In the Preface to Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, I find mention made of " The Legend of (Saint)
St. Nicholas Throckmorton, Knt. Chief Butler of England, who died of poison, anno 1570. An
historical poem, by his nephew Sir Nicholas Throckmorton."
VOL. II. 4 A
546 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1570.
that I know." He was for some time no good friend to the Secretary, though
in his dispatches from France, published by Forbes, he incessantly professed
himself to be so. Such are the uncertainties of courtly connexions.
From a letter, however, in Haynes, p. 571. addressed to the Secretary by Sir
Nicholas just before his death, the latter appears to have wished to exonerate
himself from some charges of ingratitude and insincerity towards the former ;
in fact, Throckmorton was Leicester's man, but it has beeji conjectured that a
secret reconcilement had taken place between him and Cecil, which hastened
the end of the former. We must copy what appears in the secret memoirs of
Dudley Earl of Leicester, as a record of those times, though we cannot be ex-
pected to vouch for the truth of the fact.
" I was recounting to you (said the gentleman) others made away by my
Lord of Leicester with like art; and the next in order, I think, was Sir Nicholas
Throckmorton, who was a man whom my Lord of Leicester used a great while,
as all the world knoweth, to overthwart and cross the doings of my Lord Trea-
surer, then Sir William CECIL, a man, specially always misliked of Leicester,
who in respect of his old master, the Duke of Somerset, as also for that his great
wisdom, zeal, and singular fidelity to the realm, was like to hinder much this
man's designments; wherefore, understanding after a certain time, that these
two Knights were secretly made friends, and that Sir N. Throckmorton was
like to detect his doings (as he imagined), having conceived also a secret grudge
and grief against him, for that he had written to her Majesty, at his being Am-
bassador in France, that he heard it reported at Duke Montmorency's table,
that the Queen of England had a mind to marry her horse-keeper, invited the
said Sir Nicholas to a supper, where, by a surfeit there taken, he died of a
strange incurable vomit. But the day before his death, he affirmed plainly
that he had taken poison in a sallat; inveighing most earnestly against the
Earl's cruelty and bloody disposition, affirming him to be the wickedest, most
perilous, and perfidious man under heaven." Camden says, " Sir Nicholas
died in a good time for him and his, being in great danger of losing life
and estate by reason of his restless spirit." His Letter, indeed, to Mary Queen
of Scots, preserved by Melvil [Memoirs, p. 119], is sufficient to shew this.
On the removal of Bishop Grindal from London to the archiepiscopal see of
York, which took place early in the year, Lord Burghley endeavoured to per-
suade his friend, Dr. Sandys, Bishop of Worcester, to accede to the Queen's
nomination of him as the successor of Grindal ; but the Bishop appeared very
1570.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 547
backward to accept the proffered translation, so that Lord Burghley was obliged
to remonstrate with him, and, probably, in such forcible terms, as to make the
Bishop apprehensive that, by his backwardness, he had offended both the
Queen and Lord Burghley himself. To the latter, therefore, he wrote a sort of
penitential letter, to be seen in Strype, and in which he excuses himself from
all intention of giving offence. " I have given no just cause of offence," says
his Lordship : " my conscience standeth clear. I have ever honoured and
loved you, before all other men ; I have been, and will be very ready, at your
commandment, in what I can." The worthy Bishop had already fallen under
the displeasure of Leicester, in consequence of his having written privately to
Lord Burghley before him.*
The translation however took place, as the Secretary wished ; and it would
appear, from abundance of letters still preserved, that the friendship subsisting
between Lord Burghley and the Bishop was in no manner impaired by what had
passed, but that they continued upon the best terms to the end of their lives.
Having spoken of the bad state of Lord Burghley's health at the beginning
of this year (or termination of the last, according to the reckoning of those
times), the following passage, in a letter from that celebrated minister, Sir
Francis Walsingham, ought not to be omitted :•—
" I was right sorry to understand that the gout hath of late newly assailed,
after so small a time of respite. Surely, Sir, seeing that both God and nature
do so require, you must with importunacy desire her Majesty so to use your
service, as you may long serve ; of whose lack, I pray God, she may never
have trial."
* Life of Parker, ii. 9. — The Primate himself also, about this time, incurred the displeasure of
Leicester, for not abetting the latter, according to the author of his Life (1727), in a case, where
he probably had received a bribe. Upon this occasion the Archbishop, in a letter to Lord
Burghley, wrote, in allusion, as it is judged, to Leicester, " Sunt quidam, quos si quid jures,
plumd kvior gratia ; si quid ojfendas, plumbeas iras gertmt."
CHAP. XII.
1571.
The Thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, began November 17, 1570.
Dales puzzling — Marriage of the Queen revived — Wahingham sent — His instructions-
Leicester and Burghleij specially appointed to treat with the French minister— Sir Thomas
Smith sent to Paris — Duplicity of both Courts — Scotch Commissioners— Leicester's
account to Walsingham of the conference — Wal&ngham's answer — Of the part Cecil had
to act in Mary's case — Due d'Anjou — Ridolpho — Duke of Norfolk — Rapin's account
of their plots — Intrigues against Elizabeth carried on by Mary with Spain and France —
Bishop of Ross committed to custody — Lord Burghley's letters to Lord Shrewsbury—
Spanish minister sent out of England — Design of the Spanish Faction against the Queen's
and Lord Burg/ilcy's life— Parliament meets— Debateonihe succession — Bill passed making
certain o/ences treasonable— Sir Thomas Smith — Death of Bishop Jewel — His Apology-
Sir Francis Kno/lys — The Lord Keepers speech on the opening of Parliament— Of the
great share Lord Burghley had in the good government of the kingdom — Affairs of the
Church — Strype — Protestations —Leicester — Code of ecclesiastical and civil laws— Battle
of'Lepanto — Archbislvtp Parker — Lord Burgh ley's daughter married to Lord Oxford —
Miss Aikiii's character of Lord Oxford — Queen's Progresses — Theobalds.
WE have already intimated that some of the transactions included in our
account of the last year, belong rather to the one we are now entering upon, as
having occurred in the first months of the year 1571, though, according to a
computation then much in use, assigned by many historians to the year 1570.
To keep strictly and invariably to the historical year, might subject us to the
imputation of gross mistakes in points of such importance; for instance, as deaths,
births, advancement to honours, &c. &c., which must be known to stand recorded
in other places under dates apparently different. Thus, the very monument
erected to the memory of the Regent Murray, of whose death we gave an
account in our last chapter, states, that he was assassinated towards the close
of the year 1569; but as it was on the 23d day of the month of January, the his-
torical reckoning would more properly place it in the very commencement of the
year 1570. The advancement of Sir William Cecil to the peerage, which we
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 549
have also noticed in our last chapter, having taken place in the month of
February, has, in like manner, led many historians to put it among the events
of the year 1570,* though more properly speaking, and according to the course
of modern computations, it happened in 1571, and in the thirteenth year of
the Queen's reign.
We have also alluded in our last to the proposed marriage of the Queen with
the French Prince the Due d'Anjou, the negotiations concerning which began
indeed in 1570, but were more earnestly carried on in the present year ; to which
purpose, Walsingham (a creature of Lord Burghley's, Rapin calls him, but that
he was any otherwise so, than as a most able disciple of his great school of
politics/]' it would be difficult to shew,) was sent to Paris, with instructions from
the English court, drawn up, as it is generally supposed, by Lord Burghley him-
self, which have obtained a reputation too marked and particular to be properly
passed over ; we allude to what we find said of them in the celebrated work of
Wiquefort on the Functions of an Ambassador, in which that curious writer,
speaking of Walsingham himself, not only calls him, " un des plus adroits
esprits que 1'Angleterre ait produits," but pronounces the letter of instructions
given to him by Lord Burghley to have been, " une piece si bien tournee, qu'il
* The confusion occasioned by these differences of computation we have often found to be very
perplexing. Thus, the same writer sometimes uses both computations, as may be seen in Digges'
Compleat Ambassador, where Sir Francis Walsingham will be found to date some of his letters
in February, 1571, and some in March, 1570, though both months were in the same year.
Leicester, in communicating to him the death of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, dates his letter
February 14, 1571. Sir Francis dates his Answer, March 5, 1570. — Digges, 47, 48.
+ " Two such ministers of state as no age in this nation has produced their equals." — Address
to the Reader, by the Editor of Digpes's Compleat Ambassador. " Cecil bred him his agent," says
Lloyd, in his State Worthies, " as he bred hundreds. His apprehension was quick, and his
judgment solid : his head was so strong that he could look into the depth of men and business,
and dive into the whirlpools of state. Dexterous he was in finding a secret, close in keeping it;
much he had got by study, more by travel, which enlarged and actuated his thoughts : his con-
verse was insinuating and reserved : he saw every man, and none saw him." There is a very
curious little book extant, called "Arcana Aulica, or Walsingham's Manual of Prudential Maxims
for the Statesman and Courtier." How far in its present state it is altogether to be attributed to
that eminent Minister we are not prepared to say, but it contains many curious rules or maxims,
chiefly drawn from the classical writers. It was translated into French, and published at Lyons,
1695, under the following title, " MaximesPolitiques ou k Secret des Cours;" upon which the authors
of the Dictionnaire Historique make this remark : " Ce Secret des Cours n'en est plus un aujourd'
hui ; et son livre est du nombre dc ceux que le terns a rendus inutiles."
550 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
ne se peut rien voir de plus fort ny de plus judicieux sur un sujet si difficile."*
The subject, indeed, was a difficult one ; for it was to persuade Charles IX. and
Catherine de Medicis to be lenient towards the Hugonots ; to plead in favour of
the King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, and the Admiral de Coligni, who
were detested by that bigoted court; and, if possible, to induce the Duke
d'Anjou to renounce Catholicism in order to marry Elizabeth, which latter the
young Prince seemed to be extremely desirous of doing, if the high protestations
he made to Walsingham himself upon the subject, are to be at all credited.
Upon this, as upon all other occasions of a similar nature, it appears to have
been impossible to fathom the depths of the Queen's own mind ;f so much was
to be apprehended from the Queen of Scots' pretensions, as long as Elizabeth
remained single, that there is little room to doubt that Lord Burghley sincerely
desired that she should form some suitable match ; and upon hints received from
abroad that the Due d'Anjou was by no means bigoted to the Romish faith, the
alliance contemplated seemed to afford as good hopes as any. The marriage alone
would make some of Mary's adherents waver, and so close a connexion with
France must have been likely to give strength to Elizabeth against others of
the states of Europe, particularly Spain. J But it seems probable, that whatever
advances were made on either side, neither Elizabeth nor the French court
entertained any sincere desire of concluding such a marriage. It is said that
Lord Burghley for some time really judged the Queen to be in earnest, and
* Tom. i. 352. The instructions are to be found at the beginning of Digges's Compleat
Ambassador. They bear the signature of CECIL at the foot of them ; but there is a still more
important paper in the same work, p. 9, purporting to be a full statement of Elizabeth's pro-
ceedings in regard to Mary Queen of Scots, and addressed to Sir Henry Norn's by the Queen's
Majesty, for the information and satisfaction of the French Court. This paper should certainly
be perused by all who would wish to judge properly of the real bearings of that disastrous case.
It seems to have been entirely drawn up by Lord Burghley. — See p. 18. — See also the instruc-
tions to Walsingham immediately following, signed William Cecil, Dec. 22, 1570.
f " As for the inward intention of her Majesty in this case, we cannot certainly give you to
understand more than it pleaseth her to utter." Letter to Walsingham, July 8, 1571. Signed
Ro. Leicester, Will. Burleigh.
J Lord Burghley looked further, and appears from one of his letters to Walsingham, to have
contemplated the possibility in case the match should proceed, and the Duke renounce Ca-
tholicism, of his becoming, in conjunction with the German Protestant States, the head of a
confederacy to root out Popery entirely. — Strype's Annals, li. Digges, 72. The Duke was
thought to have imbibed some good notions of Protestantism from Carnvalkt, one of his
governors.
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 551
Walsingham was not less deceived by the flatteries and dissimulation of the
French King and his mother.* Elizabeth found some repose from other troubles
while the negotiation was kept on foot, and the French Court probably sought to
lull the Hugonot party to sleep, in order the more treacherously to take them by
surprise, as happened soon after. In the mean while, the usual difficulty}' gave
scope to the intrigues of both crowns. Elizabeth was for a long time perti-
nacious in exacting conformity to the established religion of England, on the
part of the young Duke, which the French Court took advantage of as tending
to a rupture of the negotiation on the side of England, being careful not to
oppose it so openly, or so much, as to incur itself the blame of breaking
off the marriage ; in fact, both parties, from the month of March to the month
of September, acted with equal duplicity towards each other ; but Elizabeth
appears to have actually deceived the chiefest of her own Court and Council,
Burghley, Walsingham,^. and Leicester;^ so that her real intentions, with regard to
* See some curious instances of this in Strype's Annals, ii. The Ambassador appears, by his
correspondence with Leicester, to have fancied at one time, that even Charles IX. was becoming
a convert. He speaks plainly of the King's revolt from Papistry, and adds, " Surely, I am of
opinion, that if this match go forward, it will set the triple crown quite aside." — Digges, 83.
We are not unwilling to record these instances of the English ministers being occasionally over-
reached, because it serves to prove the extreme subtlety and deceit with which they had con-
stantly to contend, and ought to excuse that wary policy on their part which has been too often
construed into a natural and constant disposition to artifice and intrigue. It should be recollected,
that three-fourths at the least of civilized Europe were caballing against England. In Strype's
Annals alone, to refer to no other authors, it may be seen under the very year of which we are
treating, how busy the Spaniards and the Pope were, by every dark scheme they could devise,
to frustrate what was supposed to be in hand between France and Englaad.
+ We call the point of religion the usual difficulty : it broke off the match with the Archduke
Charles, and it broke off this ; but in arguing the point, much was advanced of such curious
plausibility, in favour of the conditions insisted upon by Elizabeth, that the annals of diplomacy
can scarcely, perhaps, supply better papers, than the instructions given to Walsingham. — See,
among others, those that occur in Diggcs's Compleat Ambassador, p. 97 ; that Lord Burghley was
the author of them may very reasonably be concluded.
t When Walsingham thought every thing was settled, Elizabeth started a fresh demand of
the restitution of Calais, upon which that able Minister judged the case to be rendered desperate.
Sussex and Leicester, however, gave counsel, as he says, " to forbear that toy of Calais ;" and so
things proceeded a little further. — Digges, 104.
% Burghley and Leicester were particularly appointed by Elizabeth to treat of the matter with
the French ministers at London. Lord Burghley's concern that the match could not be accom-
plished is well expressed in the following abrupt passages in a letter to Walsingham : " I have
552 MEMOIRS- OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
matrimony generally, continued as great a mystery as ever.* The negotiation,
however, so far from terminating in any breach of friendship, was followed by
a treaty for a defensive league between the Courts, in adjusting which, Sir
Thomas Smith was sent to assist Walsingham, (Killegrew being also there,) while,
in this fresh negotiation, it is now generally known, that France was only
carrying on a little further her insidious purposes of amusing the Hugonot party,
and Elizabeth, on whom its chief reliance was placed ; for it appears from the
letters of both Lord Burghley and Lord Leicester, that they had looked to no
friendly termination of matters, if the match should fail. The French Hugonots
were under similar apprehensions. " If neither amity nor marriage might take
place," Walsingham wrote, " the poor Protestants here do think then their case
desperate, as they tell me with tears." — Amity, however, but a most deceitful
one, did indeed ensue, and of which, soon after, the wretched Hugonots had to
taste the bitter fruits. Lord Burghley seems to have suspected what might
happen. In August, 1571, he writes to Walsingham, " I fear the offers of so
great amity will diminish or divert the former intention of the marriage, without
which the French amity shall serve to small purpose, but to make us ministers of
their appetites, and those fulfilled, to cast us off. Surely, I could have wished that
the extremity of the marriage had been .seen, before these baits of amity had
done my utmost, and so have other Counsellors. The Lord Keeper has earnestly endeavoured
it: the Earls of Sussex and Leicester have joined vigorously in it; and I know none directly
against it [See however, as to Lord Anmdd, Lodge's I/lustrations, i. 188]; but God has determined
to plague us. The hour is at hand; his will be done with mercy."— Digges, 115. Leicester
seems to have concluded that Elizabeth's " heart was not inclined to marry at all ;" and, perhaps,
he knew the inclinations of her heart as well as any. He seems to have been very anxious, through
Walsingham, to have procured a portrait of Monsieur, which could not be easily accomplished,
but some description of his person was sent to him. See Digges, 29. Walsingham's account of
the Queen's choice of the Lords Leicester and Burghley, as delivered in person to Catherine de
Medicis, ought not, perhaps, to be omitted : " I did not omit to tell her (Catherine de Medicis)
that her Majesty, for the more secret handling- of the matter, had made choice of two only coun-
sellors, unto whom she had communicated it; the one, the Earl of Leicester, whom she findeth
well to allow of any marriage which her Majesty liketh, though otherwise wrongfully doubted, so
specially of this which is now in treaty ; the other, the LORD of BURLEIGH, of tchose fidelity her
Majesty has had trial ever since she came to the crown." — Digges. Of Lord Burghley's own
assurance of Leicester's sincerity in promoting this match, we have a good proof in his letter to
Walsingham, (Digges, pp. 104, 105,) and yet perhaps he was deceived. See " Secret Memoirs," &c.
* See what Mr. Turner has said upon this, in his recent history of the reign of Queen Eliza-
beth, vol. ii. ch. xxx. note 107. p. 290.
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 553
been thrown before us. I see those most liked by such, as I could not find to
like of the marriage."
Among other persons who were deceived by this treaty, Lord Burghley's
great and esteemed friend, Sir Thomas Smith, was one ; of whom, when he first
entered on his embassy,* that Noble Lord had written, that he was one, he
thought, of such dexterity in his actions, and of such dutiful good will towards
England, that no advice or direction could be given to our prejudice.')" When
the treaty was concluded, and more confidence given to Charles IX. than that
artful monarch deserved, Smith wrote to Lord Burghley, " That now it could not
be said that her Majesty was altogether alone, having so good a defence of so
noble, courageous, and so faithful a Prince of his word ;" but herein, says the
diligent historian J of his Life, our Ambassador was mistaken of his man, none
being so false of his word, and treacherous as he ; all covered over with
most artificial dissimulation. " To all outward show," says Walsingham, in
one of his letters to Lord Burghley, speaking of Charles IX., "every thing is done
in that sincerity, as he that trusteth least may right easily thereby be deceived."
And in another letter, " He," (Charles IX.) " joined his words and coun-
tenance so together, as great demonstration outwardly of inward good-will,
could not but be seen." Worthy successor of Lewis XI. ! §
It would appear to those who should be able to go deeply into the history of
these times, instead of skimming the surface to supply the idle and superficial
reader with a romantic tale of female jealousies, that every movement of a
political nature on the continent of Europe, was calculated to give a fatal
direction to the conflicting interests of Elizabeth and Mary ; and that, to adopt
an expression used upon the occasion, it would have been as difficult to bring
fire and water to coalesce without the destruction of the one or the other, as for
* The French Minister, de Foix, sent over expressly to treat of this marriage, was anxious to
have Lord Burghley himself dispatched to Paris, to settle the league ; but his Lordship, mis-
trusting the consequences of the treaty, declined. — See Digges, 134.
t Strype's Annals, ii. 63. Sir Thomas's Instructions may be seen in Digges, signed Will.
Burleigh, Feb. 13,1571.
I Strype's Life of Sir T. Smith, 109. ch. xii. where may be seen some curious conversations
which passed between this able diplomatist and the Queen Mother of France,relative to Elizabeth's
marrying, particularly as a security against the Queen of Scots, whom Smith told Catherine he
cared not if they had in France, so soon as ever his Queen should have a son by the Duke d'Anjou.
^ We may have to notice hereafter some remarks of Mr. Turner on Charles's repeated dupli-
city, published since the above was written.
VOL. II. 4 B
554 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
those two Queens to be suffered to exist in mutual safety. While the marriage
of Monsieur with the English Sovereign was in treaty, conferences were holden
in London between certain Commissioners appointed by the several parties
in Scotland, tending to the release or further detention of the unhappy Mary;
and however fallacious and insincere such proceedings have been alleged to be,
yet we are much disposed to think, the result was not always so predetermined
against Mary, by Elizabeth at least, as has been pretended. Lord Leicester's
account to Walsingham of these very conferences, seems to us to carry with it a
great air of truth. Not, indeed, that we can attempt to deny that there were
devices on foot to " win delay," for we have it under Lord Burghley's own hand ;
see Digges, 78. But we must refer again to Leicester's letter for an account of the
difficulties of the case. (Digges, 51.) The following extract may deserve attention :
" My Lord Ambassador, since my last letter unto you, I have little new matter
worth the writing, saving now we are much troubled with the Scottish causes,
the Commissioners of both parties are now here ; and to write unto you what
the end will be certainly as yet, I cannot. We find both sides very stiff, and
hitherto, those for the King's party, very resolute for the maintenance of his
authority; her Majesty's scrupulosity touching his title and government, we
partly know. The unworthiness of their Queen to rule she granteth ; but the
instances of their cause to depose her from her dignity, she can hardly yet be
persuaded in, so yet she remaineth much perplexed; on the one side, she is loth
to set her up, or to restore her to her state again ; on the other side, she is
as loth to defend that which she is not well persuaded to have justice in it.
Between these, her counsel chiefly seek for these two things : that herself may
be preserved in surety, and the true religion maintained assuredly ; for as the
state of the world standeth, and upon thorough examination of this cause, it
appears, that both the ways be dangerous touching the Queen of Scots; for there
is danger of delivering her to her government, so is there danger in retaining
her in prison, her friends abroad beginning to speak proudly for her."
That Lord Burghley himself was really perplexed, as well as others, we may
judge from his well-known letter to Sir Henry Norris, September 26, 1570.
' I am thrown into amaze at this time, that I know not how to walk from
dangers. Sir Walter Mildmay and I are sent to the Scottish Queen, as by the
Queen's Majesty's letters you may see. God be our guide ; for neither of us
like the message." — Cabala, 179. It was impossible, considering what he must
have known of the state of Europe at the moment (see his Memorial in Haynes,
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 555
before referred to), that he could expect any security to Elizabeth from the
measures on foot. No man could know better than himself the invalidity of all
agreements; the basis of which was to consist in concessions arising out of the
mere circumstances of the times, and liable therefore to change, and be as soon
revoked as agreed upon ; but he had before absolutely expressed to Sir Henry
Norris, what he and others thought of the great danger to Elizabeth, from the
state of affairs in Scotland.
" Sir, — My leisure serveth me, as I was wont to have it ; all my time at
command of others, and none for myself, and little for my private friends. By
the Q.'s Majesties letters, you may perceive the state of things here. God send
her Majesty a good issue of this Scottish matter, whereunto the entry is easy,
but the passage within doubtful, and I fear the end will be monstrous.
" By your letters of late time, it hath seemed that your opinion was, for the
Q.'s Majesty to be delivered of the Scottish Queen ; but sure few here amongst
us conceive it feasible with surety." — May 23, 1570.
The question, as it concerned the Secretary, seems constantly to have turned on
the surety of Elizabeth ; and we must confess, that upon a full view of the case, it
appears to us, that there was scarcely any alternative left, but that of putting a
restraint on Mary's person. It was indeed a sad and melancholy alternative, in all
points of view ; but we may be allowed to ask, would the other alternative have
been less formidable, with regard to those who had to decide upon it on the
part of England ? Cecil was fully satisfied of its being the full design of all
Mary's friends to work the overthrow of Elizabeth, and with her, of Protestantism,
both in the north and south of the island ; and not being able to devise any suffi-
cient security against these calamities, if Mary were restored, how could he be
expected to counsel her being set at liberty ? Could she have been delivered up
with safety, there was every reason on his part to wish it ; her detention was
constantly hazardous to England, and full of embarrassments ; and so far from
Cecil being actuated by any other feelings than those of loyalty, and a vigilant
care of his own Sovereign, the very visit he had just paid to Chatsworth, with Sir
Walter Mildmay, seems to have impressed him with a high opinion of her powers
of fascination ; or to use the words of Dr. Gilbert Stuart, one of her advocates, of
her apparent " candour, sincerity, and moderation;'1'' qualities for which we are
very little disposed ourselves to give her unqualified credit, though we could not
expect her to exercise those virtues to any great extent, with regard to England,
in her then situation, as the apparent victim of a most complicated and afflicting
556 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
state of politics ; to which state of things, and to which alone, as the true
efficient cause, we are inclined to attribute her long captivity, and her final
destruction. The propositions made to her at Chatsworth, may all be seen in
Haynes. So little, however, do any of the negotiators appear to have expected
a satisfactory result, that while the English minister thought it to be his duty to
put the King's party on their guard, Mary's minister, the Bishop of Ross, as we
have before observed, gave notice to the Catholic powers of Europe, that it was
necessary for them to step in and rescue Mary from such ignominious concessions
and hard terms; but as their other engagements and difficulties at home hindered
them at that time, they hesitated not, as we have shewn, to advise Mary to
submit to any terms ; that is, in reality, to pretend compliance, and wait for
better opportunities : here then the adversaries of Elizabeth were also seeking to
gain time, or to use Lord Burghley's own words, to " win delay."
The perplexities on all sides were certainly very great. Mary's detention,
which certain writers represent to have been, from the beginning, a mere
wanton and wilful suspension of her power and liberty, on the part of England,
being full of hazard to Elizabeth ; if not more so than her release, yet very little
less. Let us then inquire if any" new motives for her detention had arisen at
this time from the movements abroad, or Mary's own plans. We have only to
look to Walsingham's answer to the very letter we have been transcribing, to
detect one such motive at the least.
" By your Lordship's of the 2Gth of March,* I find that there is some entry
made in the Scottish matters, and that you see them so full of difficulties, as
whether on retaining or releasing, there should be more safety, you can hardly
discern things well weighed as well at home as abroad.
;'The common opinion of such as are of judgment here, and wish well unto
her Majesty and our country is, that if the pretended match between her Majesty
and Monsieur shouLl not go forward, then nothing can be so dangerous as her
delivery ; for here they stand upon this point, that neither the King can be safe,
nor the realm quiet, unless Monsieur be provided of some other harborage.
' The places likely to be attained, and fit for his calling, where they would
place him, are two— England and Scotland. If England refuse, then is Scotland
more ready to receive him. This well weighed, though your Lordship, with the
rest of the commissioners, are both wise and of great experience, notwithstanding
so full of danger is the cause, as no resolution can grow to you, that shall be
• It is printed by mistake February, but Leicester's letter bears date March 26.
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 557
void of peril. I pray God, therefore, in this hard case, that that course may be
taken wherein is least peril, and most safety for her Majesty."
This throws some new light upon the subject of the sad rivalry of these
celebrated Queens. If Elizabeth it seems should reject Monsieur, and release
Mary, the latter was likely to be laid hold upon to make that Prince King of
Scotland, to the renewal of the French influence in that distracted country, and
probably to the overthrow of Elizabeth and the Protestant Church in both king-
•doms. That the French Court wanted "some other harborao-e for Monsieur,"
o '
seems proved by events ; for the reader should know, that this same Due d'Anjou,
afterwards Henry III., was the very Prince whom his mother and brother, in
order to get rid of him, procured to be elected King of Poland, sorely against
his own will, obliging him to leave the most polished Court of Europe, for one
almost comparatively as unpolished and barbarous.
In the mean while, that Mary should greatly resent her detention, be fearful
even for her life, and look to all practicable quarters for relief, cannot excite
any surprise, though the steps she was induced to take may be very reasonably
lamented ; especially as, in endeavouring to escape from her present restraint,
she was constantly in danger of being entrapped into other snares, and could
not fail to render herself dependant on unprincipled and suspicious agents, the
go-betweens of their superiors. While the match, of which we have already
said so much, was in agitation, and Elizabeth seemed to be likely to strengthen
herself by a French alliance, Mary was, unfortunately, induced to turn to Spain,
and to listen to some overtures from the Pope, which, however clandestinely
communicated, could not escape the detection of those who had to protect the
person of Elizabeth ; and who indeed, as it appears, could only have been
saved by their extreme and unwearied vigilance.* In what we have said of
* Their vigilance has been evil spoken of, as too much connected with the employment of
spies. In all cases of this nature, attention should be paid to the things discovered or detected,
and wherever the result has been, to check the course of any concealed treachery, or bring to
light any covert purposes of real danger and mischief to the state, or person of the Monarch,
it should reasonably be concluded, that none but spies could have helped to defeat such designs
and purposes, befors they became ripe for execution. Countermines are, at the least, as fair as
mines, and counterplots as plots. One of the greatest advocates of Mary does not hesitate to
acknowledge, " that while Charles IX. was openly courting Elizabeth, and doing an injury to
Mary, he was yet secretly the friend of the Scottish Princess." — (Gilbert Stuart's History of Scot-
land, ii. 58.) The same author, however, is continually declaiming against the insincerity of
Elizabeth and her Ministers, as if the only deviations from honest dealing were on the side of
558 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1671.
Mary's being under alarm for her life, we alluded to two letters from Randolph
to the Regent Lennox and the Earl of Morton, to be seen in Strype [Annals,
vol. ii. 116, 117]; and which being intercepted, and conveyed to the Queen of
Scots, werejudged by the latter to portend great mischief against her person.
These letters, as well as one from the said agent or minister to the Lords
Grange and Lethington, to endeavour to draw them over to the King's party,
do certainly betray much rancour against Mary, as wholly unworthy of being
restored to her throne, and tend to shew, as Strype observes, " the infamy the
Scottish Queen then lay under." There is certainly something very remarkable
in the unguarded manner in which Randolph alludes to the Scottish Queen's
guilt. " She is not worthy to live," says he, " whose cause ye defend, having
committed so horrible offence ! This you know yourselves ; this you have spoken
yourselves; this you have allowed yourselves. Yourselves wrote against her,
fought against her, and were the chiefest cause of her apprehension, and im-
prisonment, and dismission of the Crown ; with somewhat more that we might
say, if it were not to grieve you too much herein." — Surely Randolph would
never have written so, had he not been quite persuaded that both Grange and
Lethington judged the Queen to be guilty of the crimes laid to- her charge.
He was endeavouring to bring them over to the King's party ; and they had
pleaded conscience, honour, and safety, as obstacles to such a step. He reminds
them, that in taking the part they had at the beginning taken against their
Queen, their conscience must have been already sorely wounded, if they judged
her to be innocent. Having so acted, as to manifest their full persuasion of her
guilt, a right conscience should rather move them to abandon her cause. — There
is something very terrible in the harsh terms applied to Mary ; but, considering
to whom they were addressed, and the object in view, it is scarcely possible to
suppose that Mary's guilt was not a matter of public notoriety, and indeed
quite undeniable by the two Lords to whom the letter was particularly directed.
(See Strype, vol. ii. Appendix, book i. No. ix.) Maitland's intercepted letters
might reasonably, as we have observed, give Mary, to whom they were actually
carried, cause of alarm for the safety of her person. It is but fair, then, to
England; whereas, in all likelihood, to judge from what we ourselves have read of the history
of these times, never was so much insincerity used against any country as against England.
Thus rightly enough, in our estimation, did Lord Burghley conclude his memorial of the state of
the realm, this very year, in the following terms :— " But England must trust to reputation, by
power and stout government, for otherwise no bond of writing or wax will serve."— Hay nes, 588.
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 559
give the contents of some letters from Mary herself, intercepted about the same
time, which we shall do in Lord Burghley's own words, from a letter addressed
by him to the Earl of Shrewsbury, March, 1571.
" My Lord, — After my most hearty commendations, this day I received letters
from my Lord of Hunsdon, whereby he doth advertise me of a boy that should
shortly come hither, with letters to that Queen, and for the full knowledge
thereof I send to your Lordship the clause of his letter concerning the same,
whereupon your Lordship may the better regard the partie.
" I have disclosed the contents of some of the ciphered letters which your
Lordship lately sent to me, being hid under a stone. One was from that Queen
to the Duke of Alva, wherein she maketh plain mention of the practice of
Ridolphi, imputing the discovery thereof to the negligence of others, and not
of herself. Another of the letters was to Grange and Lyddington, to confirm
them to stand fast, and to expect money from the Duke of Alva, with the
Lord Seaton. The third is not yet deciphered. The Lord Seaton is indeed
by stealth, come through England, and so passed into Scotland by the middle
March, and is in the Castle of Edinburgh.
" Your Lordship's, assuredly,
" W. BURGHLEY."
We do not feel ourselves under any obligation to go very largely into the
history of these affairs, since they are exceedingly well represented by other
writers, and particularly by Strype, in his Annals ; who expressly says, " I am
the larger and more particular in this relation of matters concerning Mary,
Queen of Scots, to shew what just apprehensions the English Court and nation
had of imminent dangers by means of her : especially Camden being sparing
of shewing her faults, and representing her as fair as may be, publishing his
history in the reign of her son." Of Camden's partialities, or rather, of his
timid suppression of facts, and contempt of Buchanan, enough, perhaps, is
known to all readers of history ; but while we forgive him for not exaggerating
Mary's failings, and throwing as thick a veil as possible over certain parts of
her life and character, it is not fair, upon Elizabeth and her Ministers, to con-
ceal from the public any of her intrigues. Little disposed to regard her efforts
to regain her liberty as faults in themselves, we only wish to draw the attention
of the reader to the particular nature of some of those efforts, in order to shew
how nearly they touched the safety of Elizabeth's crown and person, and thereby
560 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
to do justice to her Ministers and servants. Ridolpho,* an agent of the Pope,
and of whom mention has already been made, appears to have been the con-
fidential minister of the private negotiations on foot at this time. By him,
Mary, apprehending, as we have said before, that if the match on foot with the
Due d'Anjou should take place, she might lose France, sent letters to the Pope
and King of Spain, to inform them of the state of her affairs ;f and, unfortu-
nately for the Duke of Norfolk, endeavoured to draw him again into the project
of procuring her deliverance, for the purpose of marrying her. The Duke was,
in some instances, cautious, but to very little purpose ; he became, unwarily,
too far implicated, and by the interception of letters, and seizure of papers
intended to have been destroyed, the government came into possession of what
was proposed to the Duke, by way of encouragement, on the part of the Pope
and King of Spain. We shall take Rapin's account, as very short, and yet
circumstantial enough to give the reader a sufficient idea of the dangers the
servants of Elizabeth had to guard against, and with which alone indeed we have
to do, as the biographers of that great man, whose history we are writing. J
" Ridolpho, who was the Pope's private agent (it should rather have been
secret agent, for he passed for a merchant), did all he could to persuade the
Duke of Norfolk to undertake the Queen of Scots' defence. He represented to
him that there were in England abundance of malcontents, who would be over-
joyed to see him at their head, and by that means that he might revenge the
injuries he had received, and the long imprisonment he had endured. He put
him in hopes of powerful succours from the Pope and the King of Spain. At
* Ridolphi or Riclolfi, for his name is variously spelled by historians.
+ Mary would have acted more wisely, had she waited the issue of this negotiation. Had
Elizabeth married Monsieur or his brother, and had a child by him, Mary might have been
allowed to go to France, as Sir Thomas Smith told the Queen-Mother (Digges, 195); for then
the French Court would have been as careful of the English crown, or, at least, of the succession
to it, as the English could be. By tampering with Spain, she was raising jealousies in France
as well as England.
t Lord Burghley's own account may be seen in Digges's Compleat Ambassador, in a letter
addressed to Sir Francis Walsingham, September 14, 17, 1571 ; but, as part of the letter is in
cipher, we do not attempt to transcribe it. The same letter announces the fact of the Duke of
Lennox's assassination in Scotland, September 4. See also another letter from his Lordship, on
both these subjects, p. 138; and for a more full developement of the intrigues against Elizabeth
and England, proved by many indisputable documents, and the frank confessions of persons
actually concerned, the instructions to Killegrew, p. 147.
•
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 5(jj[
the same time the Bishop of Ross frequently told the Duke, by Parker, one of
his confidants, that by the help of his friends, who were many in number, it
would be easy for him to seize the Queen, become master of her person, and
detain her in custody until he had married the Queen of Scots, and provided for
the security of the Catholic religion." — This very short account is sufficient to
mark the course of the intrigues carrying on against Elizabeth at this time, with
the connivance of Mary, and in which she seems to have proceeded very indis-
creetly, the danger of discovery being so great ; which is, and always must be
the case, where crowned heads are concerned, and so much is necessarily
entrusted to persons much below them.* Though the Duke of Norfolk appears
to have endeavoured, at first, to evade the proposals made to him, yet he could
not so entirely abstract himself from what was going forward, as to escape with
impunity ; he fell, indeed, a victim to this abortive intrigue, and the liberation
of Mary became every hour more problematical, if indeed it were ever intended,
as some are disposed to deny. For, upon a fresh demand for her release being
made in the name of the French King, this correspondence with Spain, and all
the designs and plans connected with it were shewn to that King's Ambassador,
who was asked, what she might not be expected to do in France, and at liberty?
who could devise and carry on such projects, while so straitly kept? This
being reported to the King, and the facts confirmed through the accounts sent
him from England by his Minister there, he is said to have exclaimed, " Ah,
poor thing, she will never cease till she lose her head ! — In faith, they will put
her to death. I see it is her own fault and folly. I see no remedy for it. I
meant to help her ; but, if she will not be helped, Je lien puis mais."
The particular projects said to have been in agitation were, to procure the
invasion of England by Spain and the Netherlands, for the purposes of Mary's
deliverance, and the dethronement of Elizabeth. Her reception in France
* Ridolpho's general commission from the Pope was to sow sedition in England ; " and it is
not strange," says Lodge, " that he should apply himself for this purpose to the Queen of Scots;
or that she, under such desperate circumstances, should hearken to his overtures, for the reco-
very of her liberty, and her marriage with the Duke of Norfolk." All this may be very readily
granted (though still her proceedings should have been restrained by the promises she had
given); but, with regard to Elizabeth and her Ministers, the main object to look to was the
safety of the former, as the head of a Government, against which all the Catholic Powers in
Europe were combined, and who by one false step might have been soon made to take Mary's
place ; or worse, if worse could be conceived. We have not the smallest doubt, indeed, in our
own minds, that Elizabeth's fall would have been much more rapid, and much more ignominious.
VOL. II. 4 C
562 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
being doubtful, if the match between Monsieur and the Queen of England
should take place,* her design was to proceed to Spain, and be betrothed to
Don John of Austria, though she had already apprised the Duke of Norfolk,
contrary to her solemn promises to Elizabeth of not renewing that connexion
(see Digges, 148) ; that, if he consented to aid her designs, her match with
Don John would be only pretence;^ and that she should reserve herself for
him, as soon as she should obtain possession of her son, for which she was
practising with the Duke of Alva ; the Prince also was to be transported into
Spain, and married to the King of Spain's daughter.^ In some of the papers
intercepted, it was also found that she had spoken very injuriously of the
Queen Mother of France.
Though all these projects and designs were discovered, it does not appear
that any very rigorous steps were taken with Mary personally, in consequence
of the discovery.^ It was quite expedient that some greater restraint should be
* Mary's relatives in France seem to have been very suspicious of the negotiations on foot
with England. "The House of Guise secretly doth travel by all means to break the amity with
England, for that they think nothing will more prejudice the Q. of Scots, their kinswoman, than
the same." — IValsingham to the Lord of Burgkley, September 16, 1571.
f This appears to have been communicated to the Duke before the Commissioners met in
London. — See Stiype'n Annals, ii. 119.
I See Lord Btirghley's letter, Digges, 139. See also Sir Thomas Smith's letter to Lord
Burghley, ib. 193—198; and the Queen's instructions to the Earl of Lincoln, May 25, 1572,
signed Burleigh, p. 206.
| See Lord B.'s letters-to Lord Shrewsbury upon it, in Haynes, Strype, Lodge, &c. One of
these letters must be transcribed : —
" Lord Burghley to the Earl of Shrewsbury.
"This matter of the Duke of Norfolk groweth daily larger upon examination; I am sorry to see
so many touched therewith. My Lord Cobham is in my house as a prisoner, who otherwise
should have been in the Tower : I loved him well, and therefore am sorry for his offence. The
conveyance of that Queen from you, appeareth to have been many ways attempted, whereof the
Duke confesseth to have been acquainted with sundry ; beside Sir Thos. Stanley's enterprise,
Sir Henry Percy, for whom 1 am right sorry, was a great devisor to have had her from you about
Easter last, and the Bishop of Ross had before taken the measure of a window, where she should
have been letten down. Your change of her lodging altered the enterprise, whereat she was
much offended. Powell also your pensioner, who is this day sent to the Tower, was another
enterpriser. One Raw, a servant of the Lord Lumley's, would also have stolen and carried her
to a castle in Cleveland of the Lord Lumley's, but in all their confessions it appeareth your strait
keeping of her disappointed them ; of all these the offenders confess that the Queen was always
privy."— 19 Oct. 1571.
157L] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 563
put upon her conferences and communications with the Queen's subjects ; but
she was otherwise entertained honourably and well treated, as Lord Burghley,
or rather the Queen in her instructions to the Earl of Lincoln, desired should be
duly represented to the French King.* Nor was she yet degraded below her
rank as Queen of Scots ; for the punishment to be awarded to the Bishop of
Ross, for his practising in the business, drew these points into question. As he
claimed the privileges of an Ambassador, difficulties arose, which it was
deemed expedient to refer to the Judges of the land, (or leading Civilians, as
they seem rather to have been.) From this very reference, it appears, that
Elizabeth had not yet attempted to deny Mary's title of Queen,t or openly
acknowledged her to be a prisoner ; she had not been brought to allow that
she was lawfully deposed, or incapable of appointing an Ambassador ; J but the
* Digges, 139, in Lodge's Illustrations of History, vol. ii. 52, may be seen a curious Chekeroll
(as it is there called) of Queen Mary's attendants this year, it is dated May 3, 1571, and consists,
servants and all, of thirty persons, with nine others, stated to be " permitted of my Lord's bene-
volence," that is, Lord Shrewsbury, by whom the original paper is indorsed. It was however
approved by Elizabeth, as Lord Burghley intimated to Lord Shrewsbury. " The Q.'s Majesty
lyketh well of all your orders, and can be content that (if yourself be so content) the number
above 30 permitted to be with that Queen by your Lordship shall remain." — Lodge, ii. 55. Eliza-
beth indeed upon discovery of these extensive intrigues against her, the drift of which could not
be misunderstood, formed a more determined resolution to support the young King of Scots and
his party, as may be seen in Strype's Annals, ii. 112.
+ In the instructions to Sir Thomas Smith, Ambassador at Paris, these words occur — ''And if
they will needs have mention made of Scotland, we can be content that the same shall be (if we
will not accept the name of the King) by the name Regnum Scotioe, or Regnum et status Scolice," —
Digges, 159.
t In a letter from Lord Burghley to Lord Shrewsbury, May 14, 1571, in which he is directed to
make inquiries tending to impeach the veracity of the Bishop, who was at the bottom of all the
intrigues going forward, is the following passage: "If the Q. of Scots be offended with the
restraint of the Bishop, certainly you may say that the whole Counsell have found his practises
against the Q.'s Majesty so evident, and, for the more part, now confessed by himself, that they
all have fully and earnestly determined to proceed against him sharply, and that it is not the
particular displeasure of any towards that Queen, or towards him." Of the amount of the Bishop's
confessions, and of the conspiracy in general, a very good account is to be seen in the same letter.
— Lodge, ii. No. Ivi. The confessions obtained from several, by the use of the rack upon this and
jther occasions, it is impossible to defend, or in these days, even think of without horror ; but
such were the times, and we can only congratulate ourselves that we live in a more advanced state
of civilization. It may however be asked, how long is it since Europe can be said to have been
rid of this horrible expedient? It was no longer ago than 1816, that, to the praise of good
564 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
Bishop of Ross's interference led to another question, namely, how far even a
regular Ambassador might forfeit his claim to privilege, by treasonable practices;
and upon such grounds it was that this meddling Bishop was committed to
custody.* It was time indeed to settle this question, for it was too much the
practice both with the French and Spanish Ambassadors, to lend themselves to
the furtherance of purposes extremely inimical to the Queen's safety and repose,
of which many instances are to be found in the history of these times ; some
leading to positive and deliberate expulsion, as happened indeed in this very
case, with the Spanish Minister,! who was sent out of the kingdom for his
practices with the Duke of Alva to invade England, and for his general know-
ledge and furtherance of the intrigues on foot.
As it is certain that Queen Mary had many friends in England, for she had
a great hold upon the Catholics, and upon all who were dissatisfied with the
Queen's Government, so is it very reasonable to conclude that she had many
enemies, or, at the least, many persons opposed to her claims upon the crown,
Pius VII. (for such many of our countrymen now living would surely acknowledge him to have
been) torture was formally abolished in all the tribunals of the holy office !
• On the 5th of June, 1571, Lord Burghley, writing to Sir Francis Walsingham in France, says,
" The Bishop of Ross is still restrained and so deserveth." — And see, as to the charges against
him, Digges's Compleat Ambassador, p. 107. He was, however, afterwards released, through the
influence of Lord Burghley himself, whom Strype calls " The mild Lord Treasurer."
t ''This Ambassador," says Strype, "according as some letters of the Lord Burghley relate,
had used himself crookedly, perniciously, and maliciously against the State, and the chiefest of
the Queen's Counsellors, and openly against that Lord." And indeed, about the month of
December, Lord Burghley appears to have been in great danger of his life by some of the Spanish
faction, who had procured an Englishman to kill him, and the Queen too. The Spanish Minister
had openly accused him at the Council-board, of being the cause of all the differences between
Philip and Elizabeth ; but Lord Burghley very properly appealed to the board, who unanimously
affirmed, that he had done nothing but what had proceeded from her Majesty in Council. The
Earl of Sussex in particular defended his friend, in a speech addressed to the Minister, in the
Italian language: it was soon after this that the Ambassador was dismissed. — See Lord Burghley's
letter to Walsingham, Digges, 161,2. And in another letter he writes, "On Friday last the
Spanish Ambassador was sent for to the Councell, and in the Queen's name commanded to depart
the realm. The same hath been oftentimes intended, but never put in execution before this
present, and now provoked by intelligence of certain new practices within this realm, to persuade
the Queen's subjects that the King his master would aid them with power this spring." — December,
1571. In regard to the Bishop of Ross's case, Lord Burghley, in a letter to Lord Shrewsbury
already cited, writes, " It is agreed by the learned Counsel!, both civil and temporal, that the
Q. Majesty may proceed against him as against a subject, for treason and conspiracy."
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 565
whether immediate or remote ; immediate, as seeking to dispossess Queen
Elizabeth, or remote, as claiming to be her acknowledged successor. Both
these claims must have been extremely obnoxious to the Protestants,* as well
as to all those who were jealous of foreign influence. Mary was not only a
Catholic, but of a Catholic family notoriously bigoted, and adverse in every
possible way, to what was called, the spread of the gospel. All her depen-
dencies were foreign, and now that she was a prisoner, it was manifest, that
she was seeking deliverance by the hands of foreigners, hostile to England, to
the present settlement of the crown, and to Protestantism.
It was in allusion to the divisions prevalent at this time, that the following
passage occurs in Strype : " Queen Elizabeth would sometimes in the midst
of her cares, divert herself by study and reading ; and sometimes versifying, as
she did in composing a copy of verses upon the Queen of Scots, and those of
her friends here in England near this time : which Dr. Wylson has preserved to
us in his English Logic ; for she, to declare that she was nothing ignorant of
those secret practices among her people, and many of her Nobility inclining too
far to the Scottish Queen's party, though she had long with great wisdom and
patience dissembled it, wrote this ditty most sweet and sententious ; not hiding
. from all such aspiring minds the danger of their ambition and disloyalty, which
afterwards fell out most truly, by the exemplary chastisement of sundry persons^
who, in favour of the Scottish Queen, declining from her Majesty, sought to
interrupt the quiet of the realm, by many evil and undutiful practices ; her verses
were as follow :
" That doubt of future foes exiles ray present joy ;
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy.
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects faith doth ebb ;
Which would not be if reason rul'd, or wisdom weav'd the web.
But clouds of toys untry'd do cloak aspiring minds,
Which turn to rain of late repent, by course of changed winds.
The top of hope suppos'd, the root of ruth will be,
And fruitless all their grafted guiles, as shortly ye shall see.
Those dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds,
Shall be unseal'd by worthy wights, whose foresight falsehood finds.
The daughter of debate, that eke discord doth sow,
Shall reap no gain, where former rule hath taught still peace to grow.
• See however an exception in Strype's Annals, ii. 127-8.
5Q6 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
No foreign banish'd wight shall anchor in our port ;
Our realm it brooks no stranger's force: let them elswhere resort,
Our rusty sword with rest, shall first the edge employ,
To poll their tops that seek such change, and [thereto] gape with joy."
Though Strype's taste led him to call it " sweet and sententious," Miss Aikin
is more right, perhaps, in her remark, that its authenticity, which has never
been called in question, constitutes its principal merit. Puttenham has also
inserted it in his " Arte of English Poesie."
On the 2d of April, 1571, 13th of Elizabeth, her Majesty's third Parliament
met, which sat about two months, and one of the first subjects that fell under
debate, happened to be about the succession. The entertainment of the suit of
Monsieur, might, probably, be much connected with this discussion in Parlia-
ment, as Elizabeth, generally, upon such occasions, held out hopes of marriage.
For as long as there was no marriage concluded upon, or prospect of lawful
issue, it could not fail to become a great national question, who should, or wjho
might, come next ? Henry VIII. had marked out the line of succession, under
a Parliamentary sanction, and Elizabeth reigned upon the footing of the same
title ; it was alleged by some, therefore, that those who had already sworn and
paid obedience to the persons named in Henry's will immediately to succeed
him, were equally bound to acknowledge those who came after them in the same
line of succession, namely, the Suffolk family ; but some were for going far-
ther, and in fact, for totally setting aside the Scottish claims, as not acknow-
ledged by the common law. Mary being indisputably, if that law could affect
the inheritance to the crown, an alien born, though of the lineage of Henry VII.,
and as such not inheritable, in right of her father, mother, or grandmother ; an
elaborate speech to this effect is preserved among the Cottonian MSS., and may
be read, as printed by Strype, in the Appendix to the 2d vol. of his Annals,
No. viii.
At such times, and while, on other accounts, Mary's title became so question-
able, her eagerness to throw herself into the arms of Spain, a connexion from
which the nation had suffered so much in the last reign, could not fail to be
exceedingly objectionable, and to excite a stronger disposition in many minds
to uphold the government already established ; strong resolutions therefore
were passed, and strong measures resorted to, "to protect the existing state of
things, defend Elizabeth's title, secure her person, and resent all hostile
attempts.
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLfif. 507
On the 28th of April, a bill accordingly was sent up by the Commons to the
Lords, whereby certain offences there named, were made treason. It passed
that House on the 8th of May, with a new proviso, and certain amendments
added to it. This act, says Camden, was occasioned by the iniquity of the
times, and the love which the Parliament then bore to their Prince and country.
The following is the tenor of it :
" That if any person should attempt the death or personal hurt of the Queen ;
or raise war, or excite others to war against her; if anyone should give out that
she is not the lawful Queen of this realm, but that any other can claim a juster
title thereto ; or should pronounce her to be an heretic, schismatic, or infidel ; or
should usurp the right and title of the kingdom during her life ; or should affirm
that any other has a right to the crown : or that the laws and statutes cannot
limit and determine the right of the crown and the successor thereof, every such
person shall be guilty of high treason. That if any one, during the Queen's
life, should by any book, written or printed, expressly maintain, that any person
is, or ought to be, the Queen's heir and successor, except the natural issue of her
body, or should publish, print, or disperse any books or writings to that effect,
he and his abettors for the first offence, should be imprisoned for a whole year,
and forfeit the half of his goods ; and for the second offence incur the penalty of
a premunire."
It is impossible not to discern in every clause of this act, a direct precaution
against the designs and pretences of Mary and her friends, though at the same
time the advocates of the Suffolk claims, were, at the least, equally laid under
restraint. It was by some, opposed on captious, if not rather fantastical grounds,*
* Sir Francis Knollys, a known Puritan, judged it to bear hard upon the Queen's Popish sub-
jects, who must either pronounce her to be a heretic, according to the principles of their Church,
or take the name to themselves, which they could hardly bear ; and he was for adding to the
words of slander, the term Papist, as some judged her Majesty to be of another religion, than that
published. Such expressions are intelligible enough considering who delivered them ; as to
Camden's notice of the term natural, he confesses that being a young man at the time, he
remembers, that it was said to have been probably introduced into the act by Lord Leicester ; we
need not point out the drift of this remark. — Though, indeed, Camden's expression has some
ambiguity in it; his words are, " Insomuch as I myself being then a young man, have heard
some oftentimes say, that that word was inserted in the act of purpose by Leicester, that he might
one day obtrude upon the English some bastard son of his for the Queen's natural issue." — 167.
See what has been said upon this under the preceding year; we shall not repeat Whitaker's
outrageous remarks upon it ; though as far as Leicester was concerned, we cannot wish to screen
him from the imputation of any mischievous designs.
668 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
and Camden himself sports with the term natural as applied to the Queen's issue,
but it is impossible to deny that the act proves the great interest taken by the
Parliament, in the security of her Majesty's person and government, and the
deep sense it entertained of the dangers to be apprehended from Mary's expecta-
tions, and the intrigues of her adherents.
On many accounts, indeed, the nation had great cause strenuously to support
Elizabeth ; maintain her rights, and pray for the continuance of her life ;* some
passages in the Lord Keeper's speech, at the opening of the Parliament, contain
appeals to the people through their representatives, on the happy course of her
government hitherto, exceedingly striking, and which, if not borne out by
facts, could have been no better than a mockery of the Queen, who was present
when he spoke.
" And here — albeit that the benefits that the realm hath received by God's
grace, and the Queen's Majesty's goodness, both for the number and greatness,
are such as may be more easily marvelled at, than worthily weighed and con-
sidered ; yet mean I to remember briefly three of them, whereof the first and
chief is restoring and setting at liberty God's holy word amongst us ; the
greatest and most precious treasure that can be in this world ; for that either
doth or should benefit us in the greatest degree ; to wit, our minds and souls ;
and look how much our souls excel our bodies, so much must needs the benefits
of our souls excel the benefits of our bodies ; whereby also, as by a necessary
consequent, we are delivered and made free from the bondage of the Roman
tyranny ; therefore this is to be thought of as the most principal benefit. -\
* Considering what great changes might have ensued, to the utter loss and confusion of all
true friends of the Reformation, at this time, had Elizabeth died issueless, the following strong
expressions of that wise statesman, Sir Thomas Smith, are not hyperbolical. Lord Burghley
having written to him that the Queen had been ill, but was recovering, though his care about her
had not ceased, Sir Thomas answered him in the name of his colleague, Sir F. Walsingham, as
well as his own, " that he might be sure it did as little cease in them, calling to their remembrance
and laying before their eyes, the trouble, the uncertainty, the disorder, the peril, and danger,
which had been like to follow, if at that time God had taken from them the Stay of the Common-
wealth, and hope of their repose ; that lanthorn of their light, next to God; whom to follow,
nor certainly where to light another candle, they knew not."
t As in the course of this year, [viz. Sept. 23.] one of the greatest lights of the English
Reformed Church, departed this life, we mean Bishop Jewel ; at which time also, a second
edition of his celebrated Apology was put forth, we cannot avoid copying a passage, to be found in
the dedication to the Queen, which admirably sets forth the true character of the Reformation
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 569
" The second is, the inestimable benefit of peace during the time of ten whole
years together and more ; and what is peace ? Is it not the richest and most
wished-for ornament that pertains to any public weal ? Is not peace the mark
and end that all good governments direct their actions unto? Nay, is there any
benefit, be it never so great, that a man may take the whole commodity of, without
the benefit of peace ? Is there any so little commodity, but through peace a man
may have the full fruition of it? By this we generally and joyfully possess all ; and
without this, generally and joyfully we possess nothing. A man that would suffi-
ciently consider all the commodities of peace, ought to call to remembrance all the
miseries of war ! For in reason it seems as great a benefit to be delivered of the
one, as to be in possession of the other. Yet if that were nothing, the common
and lamentable calamities and miseries of our neighbours round about us, for
want of peace, may give us to understand what blessedness we are in that possess
it. — Now is it possible, trow you, that this blessed benefit of peace would have
been from time to time thus long conserved and conferred upon us, had not the
mind, affection and love that our Sovereign bears towards us her subjects, bred
such care over us in her breast, as for the well bringing of this to pass, she
hath forborne no care of mind, no travel of body, nor expence of her treasure,
nor sale of her lands ; no advancing of her credit at home or abroad ? A plain
and manifest argument, how dear and precious the safety and quiet of us her
subjects be to her Majesty.
" The third is, the great benefit of clemency and mercy, I pray you, hath it
been seen or read, that any prince of this realm, during whole ten years' reign,
and more, hath had his hands so clean of blood ? If no offence were, her
as being no separation from the pure Apostolical Church of Christ (as the Romanists pretended) ;
a point always deserving of attention. After declaring that the only purpose of the Reformers
had been, to remove errors, superstitions, and abuses, the dedication proceeds, " which lawful
Reformation of our Church, and necessary repurgation of such enormities, is so far from taking
from us the name or nature of true Catholics and Christians, or depriving us of the communion
and fellowship of the Apostolic Church, or from overthrowing, endangering, or any whit impairing
the right faith, religion, sacraments, priesthood, and government of the Catholic Church, that it
has cleared and better settled them unto us ; and made us a readier and surer way to the true
knowledge, right use, and happy fruit of them." This edition was put forth in the name of all
the Bishops, as Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, wrote to Wulplmis, in Switzerland, " Is [Juellus]
omnium nostrorum nomine edidit." JPulp/iiiis indeed so highly approved the work, as to be at
the pains to translate it into the German language. The account of the death of this worthy
prelate and great ornament of the Church may be seen in Strype's Annals, ii. 146 — 150.
VOL. II. 4 D
.,
.
• .
570 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1671.
Majesty's wisdom in governing was the more to be wondered at ; and if offence
were, then her Majesty's clemency and mercy the more to be commended ;
besides, like as it has pleased God ten years and more, by the ministry of our
good Sovereign, to bless this realm with those two inestimable benefits of peace
and clemency, so there is no cause, but the same might by God's grace have
continued twenty years longer, without intermission, had not the raging Romanist
rebels entertained the matter ; and here it is to be noted, that this merciful and
peaceful reign of ten years and more, hath happened in the time of Christ's
religion now established. I cannot think that any man can follow me in this,
in the time of the Romish religion since the Conquest. These be the true
fruits of true religion. I could further remember you of the fruits of justice,
the benefit of restoring your money to fineness, &c."
We shall proceed no further, except it be to notice two other instances of good
government, to be found in the Speaker's address to her Majesty, who com-
mended her for having given free course to her laws, not sending or requiring
the stay of justice by her letters or privy-seals, as heretofore sometime hath been
by her progenitors used, and for not having pardoned any transgressors of the
laws, without the advice of such, before whom the offenders had been arraigned,
and the cause heard.
These are certainly remarkable testimonies to the course of Elizabeth's govern-
ment during the first ten years of her reign, which have always indeed been dis-
tinguished from the succeeding years, by this particular circumstance ; that is, until
the quietness of her reign excited the jealousy of Rome ; the English Catholics
were too submissive to Elizabeth's Protestant government to please the Pope.
Disturbance and agitation became necessary to answer his purposes, and from
this period, by the violence of his Bull levelled immediately at the Queen, and
* Owing to the particular care and attention of Lord Burghley, who was a great enemy to the
depreciation of the currency, so sadly resorted to in some former reigns. To the same great and
prudent Minister may probably be referred, the Queen's particular care to have all loans collected
under the privy-seal, punctually repaid, a proclamation to that effect having been issued this very
year, assuring all her good subjects, who had so advanced money in time of need, that upon proper
proof delivered in of their demands, and shewn to the Lord Keeper, they should have order
immediately to receive the whole sum due, at Westminster, without paying any manner of reward
to any officer or person for the payment, or any manner colour for expedition therein ; and they
might receive it by power of attorney, if inconvenient to attend personally, the Queen's intent
being that her loving subjects should be thankfully and freely paid.
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 571
the seditious practices of his emissaries, to excite divisions among the Protestants,
in order to make the Queen weary of the changes she had sanctioned, the bles-
sings of peace, clemency and mercy, began to be greatly abated ; no alternative
seeming to be left to the government, but to be prepared for war, guarded against
traitors, and more rigid in exacting obedience from all the Queen's subjects.
There is no circumstance of praise however in the above speeches, which may
not be said to redound to the credit of Lord Burghley ; a firm friend to the
Reformation, an enemy to war if it could possibly be warded off or turned aside,
a lover of justice, and of a disposition naturally mild and benign, it is impossible
not to discern, that in acknowledging, as fruits of the Queen's government, the
three great benefits of a Protestant Church, a ten years' peace, and for the same
period a merciful and just reign ; her most private and confidential Minister must
have been, though in some respects a subordinate, yet a most marked and
leading object of all such commendations.
We are not forgetful however of the suspicions likely to arise in the minds of
those who are accustomed to contemplate the fall of the unhappy Queen of
Scots, as a demonstrative proof of the vindictive character of Elizabeth's govern-
ment, and to regard that great Queen herself, as so far from being a clement
and merciful Princess, as to be on the contrary a most remorseless and cruel
enemy to the Scottish Queen, and highly intolerant as head of the Church. We
will venture to say the truth of history does not warrant such very heavy charges,
if all things be taken into account that should have weight in the decision of
such points, and allowances be made for certain principles, not fully brought
under regulation till a century afterwards ; we allude to the extravagant notions
concerning the prerogative of the crown, arbitrary jurisdictions, and religious
intolerance. But as we shall have more to say under the next year, upon the
subject, when the Parliament took up the case of the Queen of Scots, and an act
of vengeance against the Protestants abroad, seemed to mark the character of the
Romish religion, as bearing no comparison for mercy and clemency, with what
the Lord Keeper justly called the True Religion, we shall reserve all further
remarks upon these subjects for the year 1572.
As to what passed in this Parliament in regard to the affairs of the Church,
Strype has given so circumstantial an account (principally after D'Ewes), in the
seventh chapter of his Annals of the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth, vol. ii.
that we can do no better than refer the reader to his important pages. How
far the Government was in danger from Papists on one hand, and from Puritans
572 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
on the other, may be well judged, from two Protestations drawn up, by authority
as it is thought of the Synod, to be tendered to persons of both those sects, in
the one of which the Papist was expected to declare that the Queen held her
crown independently of the sentence of any Pope or Bishop ; and in the other
the Puritan was to be called upon equally to renounce a deposing power, in
any Church, Synod, Consistory, or Ecclesiastical Assembly. The two forms
may be seen in Collier, ii. 532. and Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker,
b. iv. ch. v.*
In this Parliament an effort was made (the last effort, says Strype), to bring
into practice, by authority of Parliament, the body of ecclesiastical and civil
laws, which had been so long contemplated,! and nearly brought to a conclusion,
and promulgated for public use, in the reign of Edward VI. — Care had been
taken to have it printed before the meeting of Parliament, and it was introduced
into the house by Mr. Norton, in hopes of procuring attention to it, but without
effect. It was supposed to have a tendency to trench upon the Queen's prero-
gative,;}; and being mixed up with other proceedings that gave her offence,
it fell to the ground. Great care had been bestowed upon this important work
in the times of King Henry VIII. and King Edward VI., being designed to
supersede and take the place of all that rubbish of Popish Canons and
Constitutions, which by the Reformation had been virtually abrogated. Dr.
Haddon and Sir John Cheke, had employed their pens, in turning this season-
able and much wanted Codex into elegant Latin, in the reign of Edward VI.
and it had now been printed with a large preface supplied by Fox, but as
Strype, in his life of Parker adds, " all that good pains is lost and fallen to the
ground." The Codex itself, however, of which we have given a pretty large
account in our first volume, p. 338. still remains ; Lord Burghley was among the
persons originally chosen to assist in its compilation. §
• The following curious passage occurs, in the secret Memoirs of Dudley Earl of Leicester. —
" Whereas by the common distinction now received in speech, there are three notable differences of
religion in the land, the two extreams whereof are the Papists and the Puritans, and the religious
Protestant obtaining the mean, this fellow [Lord L.] being of neither, maketh his gain of all: and as
he seeketh a kingdom by the one extreame, and spoil by the other, so he useth the authority of the
third, to compass the first two, and the countermine of each to the overthrow of all three." — p. 15.
f Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum. I Collier, ii. 530.
§ This Noble Lord appears to have been constantly appealed to as much on affairs relating to the
Church, as on such as concerned the State. — Some Papists, it seems, about this time had been cavil-
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 573
In the latter end of this year was fought the famous battle of Lepanto, where
the Spaniards, under the command of Don John of Austria, (natural son of
Charles V.) obtained so signal a victory over the Turks, that all Christian
Princes seem to have been expected to rejoice at it, without regard to any inter-
vening circumstances. Elizabeth accordingly issued special directions to the
Lord Mayor, to cause this triumph of Christendom, over the Mahometans, to be
celebrated by bonfires and all other tokens of joy and thanksgiving, the minutes
of the Council's letter upon this occasion, being corrected and enlarged by the
pen of Lord Burghley. England, however, had no great cause to rejoice at this
great increase of the reputation and power of Spain, nor France either ; and
therefore Walsingham wisely enough observes in his letter to Lord Leicester,
from Paris, November 7, 1571, " Whatsoever show the King here giveth of joy
outwardly, inwardly he doth not best like of the victory, as that thing which
addeth too great an increase to the reputation of the King of Spain. I think
therefore," he adds, " no time more fit to treat of amity [that is, between England
,and France] than the present." — Digges, 150. ; but this very victory impeded
such negotiations ; for both Charles IX. and Catherine de Medicis, seem to have
been struck with this accession to the credit of Spain, and as the latter (Catherine
de Medicis) was, as Walsingham says, of nature fearful, it laid her more open
to the intrigues of the Spanish party in France. The victory, however,
was celebrated as a Christian triumph, and there we must leave it,* only
ling at the reference made to St. Augustine in the xxixth of the Church Articles, concerning the
wicked that eat not the body of Christ. Archbishop Parker was responsible for the citation, and
Lord Burghley did not omit to apprise him of the objections that had been started. The Arch-
bishop lost no time in examining again the passage cited, and seeing no reason to alter his opinion,
wrote to Lord Burghley to tell him so, alleging in further support of what he had done, the
opinion of Prosper in his book of Sentences. The Archbishop, we may observe, might also have
appealed to Origen, St. Cyprian and Basil, all of whom, as Bishop Beveridge has shewn, main-
tain the doctrine asserted in the Article, which Article indeed, as well as the xxxth, was added to
those of Edward VI. in the year 1562. It is, however, very curious that the subject should thus
have been brought before the Lord Treasurer of England.
* Some things however with regard to this celebrated battle are very noticeable. It was, as
Voltaire has observed, the first time that the Standard of the Cross Keys was displayed against
the Crescent, and the Roman galleys dared to encounter those of the Ottoman Porte. Mark
Anthony Colonna, Admiral of the Pope's galleys, was next in command to Don John of Austria.
The Port of Lepanto, where the two fleets met, was the ancient Naupactus, not far from Corinth.
Never since the battle of Actium, had the Grecian seas beheld so numerous a fleet, nor so memo-
rable an engagement. The Ottoman galleys were rowed by Christian slaves, and the Christian
574 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
observing, that one of Lord Burghley's celebrated contemporaries, Cervantes,
the immortal author of Don Quixote, served as a private soldier in this famous
conflict, and lost his left hand there.*
In the Christmas holidays of this year, 1571, Anne, the eldest daughter of
Lord Burghley, a young lady of singular accomplishments,! was married to
the Earl of Oxford. The Queen honoured the marriage with her presence, J and
great hopes seemed to be entertained of its proving a fortunate and happy
connexion. Lord Burghley, writing to Sir Francis Walsingham on the very
day of the ceremony says, " I can write no more for lack of leisure, being
occasioned at this time to write divers ways, and not unoccupied with feasting
my friends at the marriage of my daughter, who is this day married to the Earl
of Oxford to my comfort, by reason of the Queen's Majesty, who hath very
honourably with her presence and great favour accompanied it." But his Lord-
ship's expectations were deceived ; it was by no means a happy marriage, as
we shall have occasion to notice hereafter. — A circumstance the more to be
lamented, because the lady had had two other proposals of marriage made to her ;
first by Sir Henry Sidney, for his only son, the very celebrated and highly
accomplished Sir Philip Sidney ; and secondly by the Earl of Shrewsbury far
his son, but which had been declined by Lord Burghley for reasons which will
be stated elsewhere. Though we must reserve much of what we have to say of
the unworthy husband of this unfortunate Lady, for another place, yet as his
character had something in it very peculiar, we shall add the following sketch
of it from the interesting work of Miss A ikin, Memoirs of the Court of Elizabeth.
b-y Turkish, both serving, contrary to their will, against their country. The Ottoman Admiral,
whose name was Ali, was taken with his galley, his head struck off, and put on the top of his
own flag. The Pope, hearing of this victory, with some point, but little delicacy or discretion,
alluding to Don John the Commander, cried out, " There was a man sent from God, whose name
was John." The victory however, after all, was of very little importance to Christendom.
* Diet. Historique, art. Cervantes.
t " She was a most virtuous Lady," says Strype. " bred up at Court, and instructed in good
literature, by one Levvin, afterwards a learned doctor of the civil law ; who in a letter to the Lord
her father, speaks of her ingenii et naturae bunitas, i. e. goodness of wit and nature, derived from
her father."
I Among the entries in Lord Burghley's Journal, is the following: " Aug. 3, 1571, the Erie
of Oxford declared to the Queen's Majesty at Hampton Court his desire to match with my
daughter Anne ; whereto the Queen assented : so did the Duke of Norfolk, being then a prisoner
in his own house, called Howard House."
1571.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 575
" Edward, Earl of Oxford, was the seventeenth of the illustrious family of
Vere, who had borne that title ; and his character presented an extraordinary
union of the haughtiness, violence, and impetuosity of the feudal Baron, with
many of the elegant propensities and mental accomplishments which adorn the
Nobleman of a happier age. It was, probably, to his travels in Italy that he
owed his more refined taste both in literature and in luxury ; and it was thence
that he brought those perfumed and embroidered gloves which he was the first
to introduce into England ;* a superb pair, which he presented to her Majesty,
were so much approved by her, that she sat for her portrait with them on her
hands. This Earl enjoyed, in his own times, a high poetical reputation ; but
his once celebrated comedies have perished, and two or three fugitive pieces,
inserted in collections, are the only legacy bequeathed to posterity by his Muse.
In the chivalrous exercises of the tilt and tournament, the Earl of Oxford had
few superiors ; he was victor in the justs both of this year [1571] f and of the
year 1580, when he was led by two ladies into the presence-chamber, all armed
as he was, to receive a prize from her Majesty's own hand." But we must have
done with this Noble Lord for the present.^
The account of the Queen's Progresses this year, in which she was generally
accompanied by Lord Burghley,§ is as follows :
" Jan. 3, 1570-1. The Queen dined with Sir Thomas Gresham, in Bishops-
gate Street, and gave name to the Royal Exchange." [See an account of this
* Among the Burghley papers, by Haynes, is a letter from Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, in
France, to Sir Thomas Chaloner, Ambassador in Spain, in which the latter is asked, in terms of
singular earnestness, to send " two pair of perfumed gloves, perfumed with orange flowers and
jasmin ; the one for my wife's hand, the other for my own."
f The royal challenge (as it was called), in 1571, appears to have been a magnificent spectacle.
As Lord Oxford was among the challengers, so was Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley's eldest son,
afterwards Earl of Exeter, one of the defenders ; who appears to have borne away a prize. The
account we have of this curious ceremony is briefly as follows (after naming distinctly the chal-
lengers and defenders) : " This triumph continued three days ; the first at tilt, the second at
turney, and the third at the barrier. On every of the challengers her Majesty bestowed a prize,
for the receiving whereof, they were particularly led, armed, by two ladies, unto her presence-
chamber. The prize at the tilt, on the defenders party, was given unto Henry Gray ; at the
tournay, to the Lord Henry Seamor ; at the barriers, to Thomas Cecil. Before them went
Clarencieux, King of Armes, in his rich coate of arms. This magnificent triumph was performed
anno 1571."— Nichols, ii. 334.
t See more about him, Aikin, ii. 6, 7 ; Strype's Annals, ii. 178, 179; and Peck's Desiderata
Curiosa, vol. i. 27. | See his Diary.
f,76 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1571.
dinner and ceremony of Sir Thomas Gsesham, and the Royal Exchange, Aikin's
Memoirs of the Court of Q. Elizabeth, vol. ii.]
" On the 1st, 2d, and 3d of May, a solemn just was holden at Westminster,
where the chief honours were borne away by Edward, Earl of Oxford, of whom
we have just spoken. In the summer the Queen went into Essex.
" Aug. 7. The Q. was at Hatfield ; and on the 2d of September, at Audley
End, belonging to the Howards, then called Audley Inn. [See a curious
account of the expences * attending this visit, Nichols, i. 280.]
" On the 5th of September, the Q. was at Horeham Hall." [The seat of Sir
John Cutts.]
" From the 14th to the 17th of September the Queen was entertained at Mark
Hall [Viscount Hereford, afterwards Earl of Essex] ; and on the 18th at Lees,
the mansion of the Lord Rich,f whence she proceeded to Hunsdon House."
This visit is supposed to be represented in Vertue's " Historic Prints,"
an engraving well known. J The Queen appears in a canopy chair, borne
by six gentlemen. Among the great Lords attending her, Lord Burghley is
represented with his wand, as Lord High Treasurer, an office to which he
was advanced about this time, on the death of the Marquis of Winchester. The
whole picture, which Vertue supposes to have been painted by Mark Gerrard,
is well described in Nichols, chiefly from notes by Vertue himself. Lord
Hunsdon appears in it, carrying the Sword of State : he was first cousin to the
Queen. §
" Sept. 21.|) The Queen's Majesty came to Theobald's [the seat of Lord
Burghley] where some verses were presented to her Majesty, with a portrait of
the house.
* Among these are " for three sugar loaves, presented to my Lord of Leycester, my L.
Buileigk, and Sir Thomas Smith, 3Ts. 8d."
f See an account of this beautiful place, Nichols, i. 99.
J Among these historic prints is one also from a picture referable to those times, we mean the
representation of the Lennox family, the original of which is said to have been painted by order of
the Earl of Lennox, father of Lord Darnley, containing many allusions to the death of the latter ;
and insinuations against Mary as privy to the murder. The picture from which the engraving is
taken, is, or was, in his Majesty's palace at Kensington.
^ See an account of him in Nichols, i. 284.
|| Sept. 21, 1571. Hugh Fitz William writes to the Countess of Shrewsbury, " Thei say the
Quene wil be at my Lorde of Burlyis house besides Waltam on Sunday nexte, wheare my Lord
of Oxford shall marry Mrs. Anne Sicelle.his daughter."— Hunter's Hallamshire, p. 83. [Nichols.]
'
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 577
" Sept. 22. Still at Theobald's, and thence to St. James's.
" Oct. at Richmond. Which last place finished her progress."
As her Majesty visited no house so often as Theobald's, We shall have further
occasion to speak of it : at present it will be sufficient to observe, after Nichols,
that the original of this very celebrated seat was a small moated house ; but in
the year 1560, Sir William Cecil began to build on a new site, designing to
erect only a moderate sized mansion, as the residence of his younger son, little
foreseeing that that younger son would so soon tread in his own steps, and make a
fortune for himself. The Queen's continual visits (for we shall have to speak of
many), induced him greatly to enlarge upon his original plans.* In Norden's
Hertfordshire, the place is thus noticed : " To speak of the beauty of this most
stately house at large as it deserveth, for curious buildings, delightful walks, and
pleasant conceits within and without, and other things very glorious and elegant
to be seen, would challenge a great portion of this little treatise ; and, therefore,
lest I should come short of that due commendation that it deserveth, I leave it,
as inde'ed it is, a princely seat."
* See Lord B.'s own account of this, Nichols, i. 205. Among the entries in his Diary, it
appears from one, that it was in the year 1570, May 15, that Lord Burghley " bought Cheshunt
Park of Mr. Harrington."
VOL. II.
CHAP. XIII.
1572.
Fourteenth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, began November 17, 1571.
Treaty of peace with France — Intrigues against Elizabeth — Indictment and trial of the
Duke of Norfolk — Execution of Mather and Berny for a Conspiracy against Lord
Burghley — The Spanish faction much annoyed by the discovery — Death of the Marquis
of Winchester, and Lord Burghley made Treasurer — Proceedings in Parliament against
the Queen of Scots — Puritans busy — Seaton's Embassy — The Queen pressed by her
Parliament to bring Mary to trial — Letter of Lord Burghley to Sir F. Wahingham —
Duke of Norfolk executed — League with France — Duke of Montmorency comes over —
Cecil Knight of the Garter — Extract from Lord Burghlet/'s Life, by a Domestic — Mas-
sacre of St. Bartholomew — Letters from Lord Burghley to Sir F. Walsingham on the
Massacre — from Lord Leicester — and from Sir T. Smith — French Ambassador —
Resentment manifested in England on account of the Massacre — Proposal of Catherine
de Medicis to meet Elizabeth — Mason Fleur, the French Ambassador — Elizabeth re-
quested to stand Godmother to the daughter of Charles IX. — Death of John Knox —
Summary of Scotch ajfairs — Secret instructions to Killegrew on his being sent to Scot-
land— Lord Burghley's Letters from Woodstock — Defence of Mary's honour — Com-
parison of Leslie and Buchanan — Disgrace of Mary — Detectio Maria— Intrigues of the
Papists — Disciplinarians — Admonition to Parliament — Dering's Address — Archbishop
Parker's Bible — Bishop Parkhurst — Extract from Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker
— Queen's Progresses.
STRYPE, in his Life of Archbishop Parker, begins his account of the year we
are now entering upon, by calling it " a year of much action ;" and though indeed
in giving it that appellation, he refers chiefly, as more connected with his
subject, to the dangers incurred by the Church of England, from the Papists on
the one hand and the Dissenters on the other, which gave the Archbishop great
trouble (and we may safely add his friend Lord Burghley no less), yet had he
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 578
- w . j .. . • ,
extended his observation to what was passing generally throughout Europe, he
could not well have devised terms more descriptive of the busy, perplexing,
deceitful proceedings, and violent transactions of this eventful period.
The first entry this year in Lord Burghley's own Diary, according to the his-
torical reckoning, is as follows :
"January 3. — Charles, the French King, gave commission to the D. Montmo-
rency, the President Bi/rage, the Bishop of Limoges, and Mons. de Foix, to treat
of a firm peace with the Queen of England's deputies ; " and on the 9th of
February following, the correspondent commission sent over by Elizabeth to
Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Francis Walsingham, and Killegrew (the brother-in-law
of Lord B.) to make peace with Charles IX. is equally noticed.
Having spoken before of this peace, and the dissimulation of the French
Court in negotiating it,* we shall proceed to the next most memorable circum-
stance, the trial of the Duke of Norfolk, which took place in Westminster Hall
on the ICth of January, 1571-2. — Into the particulars of this trial it could be to
no purpose for us to enter at present, except to observe, that as it was the occasion
of bringing to further light the intrigues against the Queen's Majesty, on the
part of Mary, in conjunction with Spain and the Pope, it could not well fail to
be also the occasion of some harsher measures in regard to that unfortunate
Princess, and some strokes of policy, more needful, perhaps, than creditable ;
for we wish to be understood as seeking rather to account for what came to pass,
than to vindicate in all points the course of proceeding ; though we must again
repeat that in the struggle of politics, plots and stratagems must be expected to
engender and produce plots and stratagems, as mines in warfare produce counter-
mines.— We say this, more for the sake of meeting at once the heavy charges ad-
vanced against Lord Burghley, by the advocates of Mary, especially in regard to
certain transactions of this year, than for any other purpose. We certainly take
* This dissimulation was continued throughout ; on the 1st of March, 1572, Walsingham had a
conference with Charles IX., upon the subject of the treaty, during which that perfidious
Monarch often told him, that he might rely on all he said, for that he had rather die than falsify
his word, or break a promise. Great endeavours seem to have been made by the French Court at
this time to procure Lord Leicester or Lord Burghley, or both, to be sent to Paris by Elizabeth, as
her Ministers, to conclude the league of amity. To induce her to do this Montmorency was
specially selected to be sent to her, no man being more agreeable on many accounts to the
English, and to Elizabeth. It is conjectured, and not unreasonably, that mischief was intended
to the two Lords, could they have prevailed upon Elizabeth to send them. The peace was con-
cluded at Blois on the 19th of April. — See Lord Burghley's Diary in Murdin.
580 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
no delight in intrigues, plots, or stratagems ; but where they are alleged to have
been resorted to, by opposite parties, those that can be shewn to have been
adopted defensively only, may surely be expected to appear the most innocent or
justifiable, and we are confident in our own minds, that against Elizabeth, as
Queen of England, and Head of the Protestant Church of England (we might
almost add of Europe}, incessant intrigues were going forward ; and from which,
nothing but the perpetual vigilance, foresight, prudence, and courage of her
faithful ministers and counsellors, could possibly have defended her.*
The terms used in the indictment of the Duke of Norfolk, as it is to be seen in
the State Trials, are exceedingly well calculated to shew the extent of the Queen's
danger from the Northern Rebellion, and from the intrigues of Ridolpho and the
Bishop of Ross, as the secret or avowed agents of the Pope, the King of Spain,
the Duke of Alva, and the Queen of Scots. The Duke himself, perhaps, being
but the dupe f and blind instrument of the several parties we have mentioned ;
of his extreme rasJmess and imprudence in suffering himself to be so deeply
implicated in such treasonable practices, there can be no doubt, especially con-
sidering the solemn and voluntary assurances he had given the Queen to the
contrary ; but implicated J to a very great degree he certainly was ; and as
generally happens in such cases, betrayed by some of his guilty confederates.^
* Mr. Turner, whose work on the reisrn of Elizabeth, as we before observed, has appeared since
the above was written, has been at great pains to trace what he calls the " Papal Conspiracy"
against Kngland during the pontificate of Pius V., who died this very year. — He concludes that
the Northern Rebellion in 1569 was a branch of it, and that Norfolk and Mary were constantly
engaged in carrying On the design ; he refers principally to the Lives of that Pontiff by Catena,
Gabutiux, and Fuenmayor; to some MS. letters of the French minister, Fenelon, in the hands of
Mr. Murray, and to the celebrated letters of Pius V., by Guitliau ; of which letters he has given
an excellent summary, calculated abundantly to prove, that, to use Mr. Turner's own words,
" the spirit and aim of Pius extended to the gigantic effect of exterminating as soon as possible
all the Protentants in Europe." — Having alluded to the death of Pius, we cannot forbear adding to
the above the short account of that event by Professor Waleh, of Gottingen. After speaking of
the horrid privc'iptes Pins had imbibed in the schools of the Iin/ni.sitioii, and tenaciously followed
when Pope, he concludes, " At length he died on the first of May, 1572. Pope Clement VIII.
pronounced him blessed, and Clement XI. canonized him."
t Mr, Turner, ii. his Lite publication, inclines to think he was treacherous from the beginning
of his negotiations about the marriage with Mary.
I See Hiiynes, .597, 598.
S Particularly the Bishop of Ross, whose testimony bore hard against him. — See his several
examinations in Murdin, under the year 1571 — signed with his own hand.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 581
But as this year terminated the life of this unhappy Nobleman, that " very
worthy, useful, and beloved peer of the realm," as Strype calls him, we shall
reserve what we have further to say of him till that event is brought before us
in due order of time.
In the month of February of this year, two persons of the names of Mather
and Berny [or Verny], underwent the sentence of the law, for a conspiracy to
assassinate* the eminent Minister, whose life we are recording, and, as it was
nearly proved, the Queen's Majesty also ; in order to further the escape and
preserve the life of the Duke of Norfolk, and set Mary of Scots on the throne ;
being instigated, and even hired for these wicked purposes, according to their own
confession, by Borgest, Secretary to the Spanish Ambassador ; but the accused
having, in the presence of Lord Leicester, the Secretary [according to Strype], and
Sir Walter Mildmay, denied all concern in it, as well on the part of his master,
the Ambassador, who was alleged to be privy to it, as on his own, it so exaspe-
rated Mather, that he offered to maintain his words con la spada, with thesword.f
* Lord Burghley received the following notice of the plot from one of the conspirators, Herle
probably, who impeached the others. — See Strt/pe's Life of Parker, ii. 101. Mather, however,
professed to have written it.
" To the Lord Burley, by the Post of London, Jan. 4, 1571.
" My Lord, — Of late I have, upon discontent, entered into conspiracy with some others, to
slay your Lordship ; and the time appointed ; a man with a perfect hand attended you there
teveral times in your garden to have slain your Lordship. The which, not falling out, and con-
tinuing in the former mischief, the height of your study-window is taken towards the garden,
minding, if they miss these means, to slay you with a shot upon the terrace, or else in coming late
from the court with a pistolet. And being touched with some remorse of so bloody a deed, in
discharge of my conscience before God, I warn your Lordship of their evil and desperate mean-
ing. I require your Lordship, in God's name, to have care of your safety.
" To the Right Honourable my Lord of Burley, at the Court, in haste."
f " Mather hath in presence of my Lord of Leicester, Mr. Treasurer, Mr. Mildmay, manfully
charged Borgest, the Spanish Ambassador's Secretary, that his master and he both, enticed Mather
to murther me, and Borgest denying it, Mather hath offered to try it con la spada."— Letter from
Lord Burghley to Sir F. Walsingham, Jan. 23, 1571-2. The above differs from Strype in saying
that this passed in the presence of Lord Leicester, the Treasurer, and Sir W. Mildmay; perhaps,
however, it may agree in the person, as Lord Burghley was both Secretary and Treasurer in the course
of the present year. Mather is reported, by his confederate Berny, to have spoken very indignantly
of some of the Queen's favourites. " What a pity were it, that so noble a man as the Duke should
die in so vile a woman's days, that desireth to cut off such of her Nobility as were not perfumed
and courtlike to please her delicate eye, and place such as were for her turn, meaning dancers,
and meaning you my Lord of Leicester, and one Mr. Hatton." The examinations of these con-
582 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
The discovery of this conspiracy seems greatly to have discomfited the Spanish
party, who hated Lord Burghley more than any other, for the continual protec-
tion, afforded by his counsel and vigilance, to the Queen's person and crown ;*
a circumstance well proved by the following remarks of one Derbyshire, a Jesuit,
who being at Paris, and known to hold intelligence with the English Papists at
Louvain, as well as with the friends of the Scottish Queen, Walsingham found
out ; and causing one to go to him under pretence of being a Catholic, and
interested for the success of any measures taken against Elizabeth ; this agent
drew from him the following confession : pretending to lament to Derbyshire,
the ill state of Mary's affairs in Scotland, and to be much disappointed at the
discovery of Mather's enterprise, the Jesuit answered, " That the ill handling of
matters was the cause that they took no better effect ; but bade him notwith-
standing, to be of good comfort, and assure himself that there were more Ma-
thers than one in England, which would not scruple, when time should conve-
niently serve, to adventure their lives in seeking to acquit us of that lewd
woman (meaning her Majesty); for, said he, if she were gone, then would the
hedge lie open; whereby the good Queen, that is now the prisoner, in whom
rested, lie said, the present right of this crown, should easily enjoy the same ;
for besides that all the Catholics in the realm of England were at her devotion,
there were, said he [and thanked God], divers heretics that were well affected
towards her ;f which was no small miracle, that God had so blinded their eyes,
that they should be so inclined to her, that in the end would yield unto them
their just deserts, unless they returned to the Catholic faith. For if she were
once possessed of the crown of England, it would be the only way to reform all
Christendom in reducing them to the Catholic faith." Walsingham confesses
that he was anxious to make these inquiries, " that her Majesty might see how
much they build upon the possibility of that dangerous woman, whose life is a
step, to her Majesty's death, for that they repute her for an undoubtable suc-
spirators and hired assassins, as they are preserved in Murdin, are very curious, and deserving of
the reader's attention ; and we are now able to refer to Mr. Turner's very diligent and judicious
summing up, not only of the evidences of their murderous designs, but of the testimony adduced
in proof of the several steps and discoveries, taken and made, in the famous Ridolfian conspiracy,
and which terminated in the execution of the too guilty Duke of Norfolk.— See his Reign of Queen
Elizaliet/i, book ii. ch. 30.
* Pius V. in writing to the Duke of Alva, to aid the English Catholics, in their designs against
the Protestants adds, " et contra ilium quoe se pro anglice regina gerit."
t The Papists appear to have made friends even in the Queen's household, and among her
guards. — See Catena's Life of Pius V.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 583
cessor, or rather (which is a more danger) for a right inheritor." — Digges, 172.
This man ventured to foretell, notwithstanding the failure of Mather's enterprise,
that some such events would come to pass, "ere a year were at an end;" spoke
very ungraciously of the Queen, and very bitterly against the Lords Leicester
and Burghley.
It is curious that while the Papists were so mortified and discomfited with
this discovery, Lord Burghley should have received from the celebrated Beza,
a letter full of congratulations upon the same occasion. He " could not refrain
himself," he said, "from testifying by his present letters, what joy they all con-
ceived there [at Geneva], and with how great earnestness they gave thanks to
God, when to the many other benefits he vouchsafed this nation, they understood
this new one had accrued, namely the Queen's deliverance from that extraordinary
and imminent danger ; and not the deliverance of her Majesty only, but of her
faithful Counsellors, and in effect of the whole English realm ; being the chief
among truly Christian kingdoms, and the common refuge of Christian exiles.
And when this benefit did more particularly belong to him (Lord Burghley) as
being the man against whom those profligate wretches aimed by name, they did
especially congratulate him herein, beseeching God, that all the Churches of
Christ, might long enjoy the fruit of so great a mercy."
On the 10th of March, the following entry occurs in Lord Burghley 's
Diary.
" Ws. Marchio Wynton, Thes. Anglise, obiit quum esset aetatis 87 annorum."
This was that time-serving old Nobleman, the Marquis of Winchester, that
" bending willow" as he called himself, who had served many Princes, fashioning
himself to all changes, in Church and State, under Henry, Edward, Mary, and
Elizabeth. The great office he held, of Lord High Treasurer of the kingdom,
was upon this vacancy reserved by her Majesty for Lord Burghley, though his
actual appointment did not take place till four (some say six} months* afterwards;
four, however, must be the most correct, if we may believe Lord Burghley him-
self, for in his Diary it is thus entered :
"July 15. Lord Burghley made Lord Treasurer of England. 14 Eliz. 1572."
The extraordinary case of the Duke of Norfolk, as might very naturally have
been expected, turned the attention of the anti-catholic subjects of her Majesty
to the intrigues of her illustrious prisoner, the Queen of Scots ; it was impossible
* Stowe and Hollinshed date the appointment on the 13th of July, 1572; Rymer, Sept. 15.
of the same year. It is hazardous to rely implicitly, on any dates in the historians of this period ;
Lord Burghley himself is not always right, as his Diary appears in Murdin.
584 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
not to see, that there were no enemies of Elizabeth and of England, with whom
she was not willing to associate herself, to procure her deliverance and release.
An open and honest resentment of the restraints she endured, might have been
forgiven, but a clandestine correspondence with the Queen's greatest enemies,
tending to rebellion, and an actual invasion of the kingdom by foreign powers,
could not be overlooked. However innocent the Duke of Norfolk might have
supposed himself to be, of " maliciously and traitorously conspiring, imagining,
and going about not only to deprive, depose, and cast out the Queen, his sove-
reign lady, from her royal dignity, title, power, and government of her kingdom of
England," as his indictment ran, " but also to bring about and compass the death
and final destruction of his said Sovereign, to raise sedition, and spread a mise-
rable civil war ; to endeavour a change of religion, and bring in aliens and
foreigners to subvert the constitution now so happily instituted and established ;"
yet that all these things were in the view of his associates and confederates it
was impossible to doubt;* and as he had been drawn into the vortex of these
extensive conspiracies, by his imprudent yielding to the suspicious proposi-
tions made to him, of marrying Mary, it was equally impossible totally to sepa-
rate the cases. Norfolk's trial, which ought to be read by all persons desirous of
understanding the complexity of the intrigues carrying on against Elizabeth, had
brought to light many revolting circumstances on the part of Mary and her
agents. All which, coupled with the alarm of Popery, in case of her success
against Elizabeth, laid the foundation for very turbulent proceedings in Parlia-
ment as soon as it should meet, and it had received a summons to assemble
for business on the 8th of May.f But we must digress a little here, to meet
another severe charge against the subject of this Memoir.
* The Duke was son of the celebrated Earl of Surrey, executed under Henry VIII., under pre-
tence that by quartering the royal arms of England, he aspired to the crown. The family
had been zealously attached to the Romish Religion, till the present Duke embraced, under
Elizabeth, the Protestant faith. This, however, was not enough to clear him of suspicions in such
a case of conspiracy ; which had in view to restore the Popish religion; for that this was the
great object appears from the Life of Pius V., by Hieroni/mo Catena, who makes that Pontiff to
glory in having been the promoter of the conspiracy, and in having sent llidolpho into England
to stir up the English to rebel against Elizabeth. — See Rnpin, viii. 1572.
t Strype falls into the mistake of calling this the 13th of Elizabeth, but it was the 14th year of
her reign. This was the Queen's fourth Parliament, and first session of that Parliament which
was continued by sundry prorogations, to the 23d year of her Majesty's reign, there being three
sessions in all, viz. this of 1572, 1575, and 1580.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 585
There is a letter extant from Lord Burghley to Lord Shrewsbury, which being
evidently written at the Queen's command, has been judged to reflect indelible
disgrace on all the parties, by Mr. Lodge, an author to whom we are so highly
indebted for many valuable illustrations of British history. The letter, it seems,
was intended to convey directions to Lord Shrewsbury for reducing the Queen
of Scots' attendants to the number of sixteen persons ; and it urges his Lord-
ship to hold discourse with that Queen, upon the subject of the intrigues that
had been brought to light, and of which there could be no longer any doubt, but
the letter must be made to speak for itself; or rather the postscript to the
Queen's letter, for so it appears to have been.
" After I had enclosed up these letters, her Majesty willed me to let your
Lordship understand that she would have you use some speech to the Queen of
Scotts in this sort : that it is now fully discovered to her Majesty what practices
that Queen has had in hand, both with the Duke of Norfolk and others, upon
the sending away of Ridolpho into Spain, and though it is known to her Majesty
by writings, extant, how she was in deliberation what were best for her to do
for her escape out of this realm, and thereof caused the Duke of Norfolk to be
conferred withal, and that she made choice rather to go into Spain than into
Scotland or France, yet her Majesty"thinketh it no just cause to be offended
with, those devices tending to her liberty ; neither is she offended with her pur-
poses to offer her son in marriage to the King of Spain's daughter, in which
matter the late Queen of Spain had solicited her ; neither that she sought to
make the King of Spain believe that she would give ear to the offer of Don John
of Austria : but the very matter of offence is, that her Majesty understandeth
certainly her labours and devices to stir up a new rebellion in this realm, and to
have the King of Spain to assist it ; and finding the said Queen now so bent,
she must not think but that her Majesty hath cause to alter her courteous dealings
with her. And so in this sort her Majesty would have you tempt her patience, to
provoke her to answer somewhat, for of all these premises, her Majesty is cer-
tainly assured, and much more."
Mr. Lodge's note is as follows : " We have here the Prime Minister of a
powerful and wise Monarch, directing, by her order, one of the first Noblemen of
the realm to visit the cell of a prisoner, and to exercise the office of a spy of the
Inquisition, by artfully drawing the proofs of the prisoner's guilt from her own
mouth. The terms in which this treacherous mandate is couched aggravate the
idea of its turpitude. The Earl, deep in the secrets of her story, already master
VOL. u. 4 r
586 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
of all the known evidence against her, is ordered not only to sift her by artful
questions, but to assail her passions, and to work upon the weakness of a femi-
nine temper which had been rendered infinitely irritable by a long series of mis-
fortunes— in a word, ' to tempt her patience to provoke her to utter some-
what ;' what a frightful addition is this to the horrors of Mary's prison."
It is impossible to attribute this note to any less pure motive, than a strong feel-
ing for Mary, whose case, at all events, was very deplorable, but in a history like
the present, where the character of one of the parties at least, is deeply impli-
cated, something perhaps may be advanced, to palliate such very heavy charges
as the above. And first, we would observe that the Queen had already, in the
course of this very year,* almost offended her Parliament by refusing to brino-
Mary to trial, upon evidence judged to be quite sufficient to convict her of
treason, the Parliament having besides taken pains to shew, that both by Scrip-
ture and the civil law, she would be warranted in taking such a step.f Eliza-
beth, therefore, could not be seeking to draw a confession of guilt from Mary,
merely for such sanguinary purposes as the note insinuates, by making Lord
Shrewsbury exercise the office of a spy of the Inquisition. And as to visiting the
cell of a prisoner, Mary lived in the same house with Lord Shrewsbury himself,
justly called one of the first Noblemen of the realm, and what was the purport of
Elizabeth's letter ? merely to enforce a reduction of Mary's attendants (in con-
sequence of the extensive intrigues to which she had undoubtedly been privy,
using her servants as instruments against Elizabeth), to the number of sixteen —
a large number for a prisoner's cell! But even for this, Elizabeth seems to have
wished to make excuses, allowing that many things might have been overlooked,
had not the intrigues discovered, involved a rebellion against her person and
Government. Upon all which points Mary had so grossly prevaricated, that
Elizabeth was left to bear all the blame of harshness, without the slightest ac-
knowledgment of an error on Mary's part. And to shew how plausibly, with
out denying any of the facts of the late conspiracy, J she could varnish over her
* The Queen's letter was written in September.
t See Walsingham's letter to Sir Thomas Smith, Aug. 10, 1572.— Digges, 232.
t It seems utterly impossible to expect any agreement between authors who happen to dis-
agree upon the leading points of this melancholy case. In Murdin, p. 118. may be seen a list of
charges against Mary, signed by Lord Burghley, which Dr. Gilbert Stuart represents to have
been most cruelly and insultingly advanced at this time, and seems to think Mary, by her
behaviour, greatly invalidated all those charges, by still insisting on 'being admitted to Eliza-
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 587
tale (we are only seeking to do justice to the accused), she pleaded, in defence of
her renewed proceedings towards the Duke of Norfolk, that if she had not re-
nounced the marriage, it was because she was contracted to the Duke ; that she
thought herself obliged, by the love of a wife, to warn him of the danger he was
in, and to persuade him to make his escape ; forgetting, as it has been well ob-
served, that the contract with the Duke, to which she referred, had been entered
into while her third husband, Bothwell, was yet alive ; and as to the "love of a
wife," how could that be, when they had never met since the contract, and it
had been the chief charge against Norfolk on his trial, that in seeking such a
marriage he must have looked towards the crown, because the love of a husband
could not be his motive, since he had often acknowledged that he had an ill
opinion of her, accounting her a wicked woman, an adulteress, and murderer ; for
some such expressions he acknowledged to have used, before he had consented
to the marriage. We shall proceed no further at present. — Elizabeth was too
wise not to see through such shallow excuses, and might expect some more
ingenuous proceedings when it became notorious that every thing had been
discovered ; but Mary was accustomed to be on her guard, professing that she
would not utter many things she knew, unless admitted to a personal conference
with Elizabeth. On this point, which she must have known to be so obnoxious,*
she continually insisted, as an excuse for her reserve.
Of all the friends to the Reformation, it must be generally admitted, that
those who had been disciplined in the school of Geneva, were the most rigid
avengers of any open breach of the laws of morality, the most regardless of
worldly distinctions, and the most jealous of any purely ecclesiastical authority.
The admission of lay elders into their consistories, was an encouragement to
all persons to intermeddle with the affairs of the Church, and the republican
principles of the Genevese, as a body politic, naturally gave them a distaste for
royalty, if at all associated in their ideas, with corrupt, profligate, or loose
moral principles. Mary had rendered herself particularly obnoxious to all
such persons amongst her Majesty's subjects, and as there were many about the
beth's presence, or to be heard before Parliament ; but we cannot put the same interpretation on
what passed. Some of the charges, as old charges, might have been omitted, but most of them, we
think, were far from being exaggerated, and Mary's answer to them, evasive.
• " But the admission of their Queen to Elizabeth's presence, as it had been refused from the
beginning, was the more strenuously urged, because they were well assured that it could not be
obtained." — Malcolm Laiiig.
S88 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
Court, there were many also to be found in the Lower House of the new
Parliament ; so that as soon as it met, two attempts were made, first, to advance
the strictest and most rigid principles of the Reformation, by interfering with
the rites and ceremonies of the established Church, and secondly, by invoking
condign punishment on the head of the offending Queen of Scots.
On the first of these two heads, the Queen seems to have thought that it was
not only interfering with her prerogative, but with the just rights of the Convo-
cation, with whom all ecclesiastical laws and regulations ought to originate, and
when approved and sanctioned by the Legislature, be generally obeyed. On
the second head, we have little more to say, than that the attempts to bring the
Queen of Scots to trial and punishment were at this time quite ineffectual.
Some persons, we are aware, will be very loath to attribute it to any clemency,
lenity, or tender feelings on the part of Elizabeth, but the issue of things is
certainly very remarkable, namely, That having been almost reproached by her
Parliament for a dangerous lenity, and urged to bring things to extremity at
this time, by the public trial and eventual condemnation of Mary, she not only
disregarded these representations, but, that they might not be very speedily
renewed, dismissed her Parliament for the long interval, as it turned out, of
three years.* We are quite at a loss to reconcile this, with the charges of
barbarous cruelty and unrelenting malice, brought against Elizabeth by the
professed advocates of Mary ; we have read their charges, weighed their
arguments, and what is more perhaps than all, carefully looked to the spiteful
* In 1575 this was actually brought forward in Parliament as a charge agaimt Elizabeth, by
Wentworth, M. P. for Tregony. " So certain it was," said he, " that none was without fault;
no not our noble Queen: sith then (viz. 1572) her Majesty had committed great fault, yea
dangerous fault to herself." That fault was, says Strype, that she would not yield to the trial
much less execution of Mary Queen of Scots, her prisoner ; which in this same session they were
very busy about. In January of tliis year, before (he tiial of the Duke of Norfolk, and conse-
quently before his execution, towards which, as we shall have to shew, she manifested great
reluctance, Lord Burghley, writing to Walsingham, says, " The Queen's Majesty has been always
a merciful Lady, and by mercy she hath taken more harm than by justice, and yet she thinks she
is more beloved in doing herself harm." As this occurs in the very letter in which he mentions
the conspiracy of Mather, backed by the Spanish authorities, it is probable I;, alluded to some
carelessness about herself on this occasion, especially as iti the very next letter !n- writes, " Here
is no small expectation whether the Duke shall die or continue prisoner. I know not how to
write, for I am here in my chamber [he had been many days ill] subject to reports which are
contrariwise, Mather and Berny besides that they intended to kill me, have now 'plainly confessed
their intention and desire to have been rid of the Queen's Majesty."
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 58.9
insinuations of all their marginal interpretations of public papers and intercepted
letters, and we do not hesitate to pronounce them to be in general over-charged,
if not absolutely false. The case of Mary Queen of Scots was one of extreme
difficulty to Elizabeth ; the only way to shew mercy, was to release her from
restraint,* but the bad use she might make of her liberty, even to the Queen's
own deposition and destruction,^ could not but excite the attention, and engage
the thoughts of all her Counsellors, and indeed of all her faithful subjects : for
on her life and safety depended the hopes of all the friends of the Reformation,
and in fact the existing constitution and government in Church and State.
Surely these were very creditable and honourable feelings, in whatsoever breast
they were found to exist, and yet the following very harsh comments appear
upon a passage in a paper, supposed to be written and published by Lord
Burghley in the course of this year : speaking of the notorious conspiracies
lately brought to light, the paper proceeds: " And God send her Majesty so to
remove the grounds of her peril [that is, says the commentator, to murder Queen
Mary and the Duke of Norfolk], that not only we, which, by open thrusting
ourselves against her enemies, have set up our rest upon our Queen Elizabeth,
and shall never be admitted to favour on the other side, but also all wise and
* How difficult it was for Eliz-ibeth to know how to act with regard to Mary, may be judged
from a letter Walsingham wrote to Lord Burghley, in which he told the latter, that the French
were encouraged to think her case not desperate, because they heard that she went a hawking
with Lord Shrewsbury. — Digges, 174.
f The discovery of Lord Seaton's negotiations with the Duke of Aha, (for which see Camden,
anno 1570, p. 142.) was quite sufficient to open the eyes of Elizabeth's Council, as to the
preparations making against her with Mary's knowledge and consent. That Lord, calling himself
her Ambassador, had been with the Duke of Alva to procure his support to the Queen's party
in Scotland, and get possession of the person of the young King. A storm on his passage drove
the vessel he was in to Harwich, whence he escaped in disguise, and found his way to Scotland ;
but leaving his papers behind, it was discovered that the object of his journey was to encourage
those of the Queen's party who had possession of the Castle of Edinburgh to hold out, upon the
hope of speedy succours from abroad ; and indeed his arrival in Scotland, had the effect of
breaking off a negotiation then on foot with the Regent. One piece of revenge Elizabeth seems
to have taken, according to Camden, namely, that, upon a complaint of the Due d' Alva that she
encouraged the Flemish rebels, by admitting them into her ports, she dismissed them in such a
manner, that, under the command of Vandermark, they managed to escape with their ships, and
seizino- upon the Brill at the mouth of the Maese, drew other towns to the obedience of the
Prince of Orange, and excluded the Duke of Alva from almost the whole command of the sea :
and this is accounted the beginning of the war which separated Holland from the Spanish dominiom
590 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
honest men may know, that it shall be safe to be true, and dangerous to be
false." [This, says the same commentator, is the common case of those who are
totally immersed in villany ; they must still proceed to greater and worse
crimes, for their own safety, and to preserve their posts and pensions.] Surely
any candid reader will admit, that in the struggle on foot at this time, in which
Elizabeth and England stood opposed to Spain, Rome, all Marys party in
Scotland, at home, in France, and the Netherlands, there were greater changes to
be apprehended than the mere loss of posts and pensions (dangerous posts and
often most inadequate pensions), and that in cases of manifest treason and
conspiracy, absolute murder was not the only means to be looked to of removing
the grounds of peril. Of such comments we may well say ab uno disce omnes,
for they are all in the same strain.
Most certain it is, that if a disposition had not been wanting in Elizabeth, to
rid herself speedily of her most dangerous opponent and rival, she might now
have been supported by a very strong party in Parliament, who strenuously
sought to remove all objections, to the bringing Mary at this time to condign
punishment, by a judicial process. The promoters of th is severe measure, were
chiefly indeed of the sect of Puritans, who were so much opposed to Popery,
and all chances of its re-establishment in England or Scotland, as to allow of
no alternative short of that of rooting out all semblances of so corrupt a religion,
and removing all its abettors, as the fautors of idolatry.
The Committee of the two Houses, appointed to consult and deliberate upon
matters concerning the Queen of Scots, consisted of twenty-one of the Upper
House (whereof Lord Burghley was one), and forty-four of the Lower House.
The conferences holden upon this subject terminated in their presenting to her
Majesty, a paper of " reasons to prove the Queen's Majesty bound in conscience
to proceed with severity in this case of the late Queen of Scots." — The paper
may be seen at length in D'Ewes' Compleat Journal. The reasons are in
number Six, all fortified by passages drawn from Scripture, tending to shew,
the hazards incurred by any supreme magistrate, in neglecting to punish, to the
utmost extremity, certain offenders against God, or the weal of the people
committed to his charge ; accompanied with statements to prove, how, in every
particular, the Queen of Scots had been such an offender. It is not a paper to
be read in these days with any degree of satisfaction, much less pleasure ; and
we would willingly have hoped that it was drawn up more for the preservation
of the Queen's person against further plots and conspiracies, by warning Mary
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 591
in time of the sense of the nation with regard to such offences, and the hazards
she would incur by such intrigues, if they should be repeated, than immediately
to be carried into execution. But the tenor of it is certainly otherwise ;* it is
followed also by another paper, purporting to be " an argument persuading that
the Queen's Majesty ought to have in conscience a great care of the safety of
her own person ;" in which the same rules for proceeding against offenders are
insisted upon.
An humble petition also was drawn up to her Majesty, with "reasons gathered
out of the civil law, f by certain appointed by authority in Parliament to prove
that it standeth not only with justice, but also with the Queen's Majesty's
honour and safety to proceed criminally against the pretended Scottish Queen."
In this petition the avowed object seems to have been to over-rule the Queen's
own intentions of proceeding less rigorously with Mary, such as to have her
only disabled by statute, "as a person not capable of princely honour, if she
should attempt any evil hereafter ;" to which comparatively mild measure,
objections were taken, upon the ground, that no disabling law, and in fact no
laws enacted in this realm, would have any force with her, " that is fully minded
to take her advantage upon any apt occasion offered."
But as the whole course of these proceedings is to be seen in other books, we
need not dwell on them longer than to observe, that though a bill was passed
against the Queen of Scots, declaring her to be unable and unworthy to succeed
to the English crown, and the Queen commended the Parliament for the care it
was disposed to take of her person, yet the Houses were informed, " that her
Highness, for certain respects by herself conceived, thinketh good for this time
* Collier is very severe upon this paper, and rightly enough observes, that upon such points,
there is no arguing from the Old Testament to the New. He attributes the severity of it almost
entirely to the Puritans, and though some passages seem to shew that it was drawn up by a
Bishop, he conceives this might have been but a piece of art, to make it pass the better. He is
very severe also upon Knox, who died this year, for entertaining the same opinion, in which he
says, he was encouraged and commanded by Calvin ; ii. 539. — Of Collier's enmity against the
Puritans enough is known, to require any further remark at present ; but that the Puritans went
too far, in their resentments against the Papists at this time, there can be no doubt.
t These reasons may deserve more attention than the former, since we know the end of Mary,
and the difficulties that stand in the way of all attempts to reconcile the proceedings against her,
not only with common justice, as some insist, but with the known principles of the civil law;
considering: her rank, the circumstances under which she came into England, and the competency
of Elizabeth to bring her to trial.
502 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
to defer, but not to reject that course of proceeding as yet." — The Bill therefore
might seem at this time, to have been enacted in terrorem* were it not that
some, as has been observed before, proved that they were quite in earnest, by
the reproaches cast on the Queen, in the next session three years afterwards, for
not having acted up to the very spirit of their former proceedings ; observing,
that it was to be looked upon as a judgment of God upon the Queen, that " he
had (as at this time, viz. 1572) put into her heart to refuse good and wholesome
laws for her own preservation, which caused many faithful hearts for grief to
burst out with sorrowful tears ; and moved all papists, traitors, &c. who envy
good Christian Princes, to laugh (in their sleeves) all the whole Parliament
House to scorn." — Such were the words of Wentworth in 1575, evidently
looking back to the Queen's declining to take advantage of what passed this
year, relative to Mary, and "for her own preservation ."
It is extremely evident therefore, that there were at this time some much more
bent upon inflicting that severe punishment upon Mary, which afterwards befel
her, than Elizabeth herself ;t and though the restraint upon her person for
fourteen long years afterwards, may seem to many even a more cruel punish-
ment than an earlier death, yet so long (it seems almost impossible to deny)
Elizabeth continued to bear up against the dangers that threatened her, without
making that sacrifice of the unhappy but imprudent Queen of Scots, which some
would have urged upon her. J— By whom she was swayed to defer acting upon this
bill, or upon the advice of her Parliament, we cannot pretend particularly to say.
* " The Scottish Queen," says Lord Burghley, in a letter to Walsingham, June 6, 1572, four
days only after the execution of the Duke of Norfolk, "shall he touched with an act of Parliament,
but it will not draw her into any more fear to offend than words will do."
t Lord Burghley seems certainly to have been one of those who thought the Queen at this
time overlooked her own great danger. — See Strypes Annals, vol. ii. ch.xv. His lettersto Walsing-
ham indeed plainly shew it, and as to Walsingham himself, in June of this year, he plainly avowed
to Lord Burghley his opinion, that as long as Mary lived there would " never grow good accord
in Scotland, nor continuance of repose in England, nor perfect and sound amity between her
Majesty and Fiance." — Digges, 216. In Mr. Turner's recent history of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, her Majesty is not the only person blamed for not being sufficiently on her guard, but
Lord Burghley himself is judged to have been scarcely acute enough to penetrate the designs
against her, nor even Walsingham.
J May 21, 1572, Leicester writes to Walsingham, in France, " Our news is, we are presently
in hand to attaint the Scottish Queen of treason, and yet we fear our Queen will scant agree to
it."— Digges, 203.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 593
The following passage in the Queen's instructions to the Earl of Lincoln,
Ambassador to France, to receive the French King's ratification of the league of
amity, deserves some notice. — "And howsoever the Queen Majesty hath used
notable clemency and remissness towards her [Queen of Scots], in not using
such revenge hereof as she well might, and she thinketh no other Prince would
in like case forbear, yet the said Lord Admiral shall shew to the King with
great earnestness her estates now assembled in Parliament, have and do solicit
her Majesty, both in respect of her Majesty and the whole realm, to proceed
against the Scottish Queen by order of justice, for her attempts against her
Majesty's person, and the state of the realm, wherein her Majesty is so perplexed,
with the incessant clamour and request of her people in this behalf, as indeed
she is marvellously therewith troubled ; for as of her own nature her Majesty
has been always found even in her most private causes, and where her person
has been in danger, not given to shew any vehemency or to pursue avenge, so to
refuse the universal motion, the general advice and exhortation of her states, she
thinketh it so small hazard of their love, which they bear to her, and what may
happen hereof, the Lord Admiral may say is doubtful." — This document, which
is signed at the foot by Lord Burg/iley, deserves great attention as far as regards
the Queen of Scots, especially towards the conclusion, where the following
instructions to the Ambassador, relative to the House of Guise, must be supposed
to refer to facts, known to that family : "And for the House of Guise, the Lord
Admiral shall not forbear to salute them of his own part, according to their
degrees, if he shall see that they give such countenance to him as to accept it,
and if any of them shall motion matters to him, as of the Queen of Scots, he may
say, if she had been counselled by her friends to have been grateful to her
Majesty, or to have forborne the seeking to offend her Majesty, she might thereby
have done herself good, and been the cause of quietness to the country ; but she
has so manifestly taken other courses, as surely either her friends that evil
counselled her, or herself, must be accounted the principal cause of her trouble,
and so he shall use his speech of her." — Diggcs, 211.
As some may be disposed to question the gratitude due from Mary to
Elizabeth, it may be added, that in the proceedings of the Parliament, the
Queen has credit given her, for having, by her interposition, "saved Mary within
her own realm from execution of death, for her 'uiost horrible and unnatural
doings there, known throughout Europe to her perpetual shame and infamy for
ever." — The expressions are certainly very harsh and strong, but the fact of her
VOL. II. 4 G
594 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
having been saved by Elizabeth's authority, is likely enough to be true, con-
sidering the indignation expressed in Scotland, by the populace, men and women,
[See Throckmorton's dispatches,] and by the clergy, with Knox at their head.
Jn a communication with the French King, Elizabeth about this time,
appears to have cited many curious precedents, for what had taken place with
regard to Mary of Scotland. " That sons should be admitted to the govern-
ment, their mothers being excluded, is no new thing. So were Henry II. King
of England, Alphonsus the son of Uraca King of Castile, and lately within our
memory Charles V. King of Spain and Sicily, admitted to the government,
during the lives of their mothers. That Queens also have been imprisoned
every age affords instances : and France itself may abundantly testify as much,
which has seen the wives of three Kings successively, Lewis Hutin, Philip le
Long, and Charles the Fair imprisoned, to say no worse. To speak the truth, I
for my part do detain the Queen of Scots in honourable custody, for the safety
of England, and mine own security ; and for it I have examples of the French,
who shut up Chilperic in a monastry, Charles of Lorrain in a deep dungeon, and
Lodovic Sforza Duke of Milan in an iron grate, to secure their estates. Other like
instances," says Camden, " she produced out of the Spanish history, as she was
excellently well seen in the histories of all nations. Finally, she concluded, that
such great examples as these do always carry with them some kind of injustice."
That some example was necessary to be made, in a case of such deep and
complicated conspiracy and treason, as had now been brought to light, there
could be little doubt ; and after his conviction, the Duke of Norfolk could
entertain no reasonable hope of escaping. The Queen, however, appeared
reluctant to hasten his execution, and stayed it very unexpectedly, when it was
fully appointed to have taken place. — Of this Lord Burghley gave the following
account in a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, dated llth February, 1571-2.
" I cannot tell you what is the inward cause of the stay of the Duke of Norfolk's
death, only I find her Majesty diversely disposed, sometime when she speaketh
of her danger, she concludeth that justice should be done ; at another time when
she speaketh of his nearness of blood, of his superiority in honour, £c. : she
stayeth. . As upon Saturday she signed a warrant for the writs to the Sheriffs
of London for his execution of Monday, and so all preparations were made with
the expectation of all London, and concourse of many thousands in the morning;
but their coming was answered with another ordinary execution of Mather and
Berny, for conspiring the Queen's Majesty's death, and of one Ralph for
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BUR.GHLEY. 595
counterfeiting the Queen's Majesty's hand twice, to get concealed lands, and
the cause of this disappointment was this ; suddenly on Sunday, late in the
night, the Queen's Majesty sent for me, and entered into a great misliking that
the Duke should die the next day, and said she was and should be disquieted,
and said she would have a new warrant made that night to the Sheriffs, to
forbear untill they should hear further ; and so they did. God's will be fulfilled,
and aid her Majesty to do herself good."*
At length on the 2d of June, five months after he was condemned, the sentence
of the law was suffered to take place, and the Duke paid the forfeit of his great
imprudences on Tower-hill. On the scaffold he addressed the crowd assembled
below him, not without interruption from the Sheriffs and other public officers
in attendance. What he really spake, Slrype has preserved in his Appendix^
to the 2d volume of his Annals, taken from a MS. in the Cotton Library ;
Hollinshed had given a larger account, but not so correct ; and Camden, who
was present at the execution, has only reported as much as he could recollect. —
On the day after the execution, Lord Burghley had occasion to wait upon the
Queen, to communicate letters he had received from Sir Francis Walsingham,
in which mention was made both of the Duke and the Queen of Scots ; but he
found her so sorrowful about the former, that in his conference with her, he was,
as he tells Walsingham, obliged to turn from the dead to the living, and confine
what he had to say, exclusively to the Queen of Scots.J
The Duke, no doubt, died very generally regretted, for lie had some excellent
qualities, § but by allowing himself to be drawn too far into the vortex of the
* Elizabeth was so ungenerous as to cast the blame of his execution upon Lord Burghley ; but
the necessity of this sad measure was too apparent to be overlooked by others, besides Lord
Burghley, and can, we should think, be scarcely overlooked at this day, by whomsoever the
danger of the alternative to Elizabeth shall be properly weighed ; nor indeed had the Duke such
claims upon Cecil's friendship as some have pretended, since he had very much given himself up
to Leicester, and was to the last probably a tool in the hands of the Catholics, whose aim seems
to have been to get rid of Cecil, before their plan was ripe. — See Chalmers's Biographical Dic-
tionary, art. Ctcil.
t No. xiii. I D'gges, 21'2.
\ " He was a noble man," says the author of Memoirs of William Cecil Lord Burleigh,
•every way amiable, for he was learned, generous, pious, brave, and naturally inclined to every
thing good." The same author represents him, as having caused his own destruction, an
observes, that on his first discharge, Cecil gave him such advice, as would have overthrown all
the schemes of his pretended friends but real enemies ; he told him plainly, says he, that liberty
might be more fatal to him than confinement, and that as an intended marriage was the cause of
596 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
conspiracy for which he suffered, his best friends were obliged to make a
sacrifice of their friendship to their loyalty, as was the case very particularly
with Sir Roger Manners (of the right noble family of the Earls of Rutland), who
being suspected by the Queen, in consequence of his known intimacy with the
Duke, wrote to Lord Burghley, to beg he would represent him to her Majesty,
as one of as sound religion and unspotted loyalty as ever, professing his great
love for the Duke, till his sad fall : " Since which time," so he expressed
himself, " I am sure no man ever heard me any way excuse any part of his
faults ; for surely, my Lord, I never meant to love any man longer than I thought
he loved the Queen's Majesty." And this probably was the case with many.
Cecil's own words are much to the same effect, " Of all subjects I honoured
and loved him above the rest, and surely found in him always matter so
deserving." — Letter to Sir Henry Norris. Some however could not be so
restrained, and great attempts were made to rescue the Duke, which could not
but receive encouragement from the Queen's delay of his execution, which made
those who really wished her well, desirous of having the sentence executed,
that men's minds might become more quiet.*
The league with France having been concluded by Sir Thomas Smith and
Sir Francis Walsingham, the Earl of Lincoln (Lord Admiral) was sent to Parisf
by the Queen, to receive in form the oath and ratification of the French King,
and for the same purpose Montmorency was, on the part of the Court of France,
dispatched to England. Both embassies were very splendid, and the two Courts
seemed to vie in giving honour to their respective Ministers. Lord Lincoln
wrote a long account to Lord Burghley of his reception in France, assuring
him, " that as great entertainment and honour had been done him, in respect of
her Majesty, as he ever had seen, and all at the King's charges." J
his misfortunes, so a proper marriage would be an easy and speedy cure of them. Had the Duke
followed thisadvice indeed he might have saved his life." — See also Camden, 148.
• The Duke was the first Nobleman beheaded in this reign. Carte tells us the Queen revoked
no fewer than four warrants for his execution, but so little credit is he disposed to give Elizabeth
for any amiable feelings, that he thinks she was only seeking to procure addresses to sanction her
severity. f See before ; — the treaty may be found in Camden, 185.
J His account of the sumptuous entertainments given at Paris by the royal family may be seen
in Nichols, i. 302, taken from the Lord Admiral's letter to Lord Burghley ; how admirably Charles IX.
acted his part upon this as upon former occasions, the following passage may serve to shew :
" When the King had heard his Even-song, we were sent for by the Prince Dolphin to the King,
and there at his high altar he took his oath, and afore he did swear, he told me openly that there
was nothing that ever contented him better than this league, between the Queen his good sister
1572,] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 597
It was on the 9th of June that the French Ambassador, the Duke of Mont-
morency, chief Marshal of France, reached Dover, with a large retinue, and on
the 14th arrived at Somerset House, in London ; * whence taking his barge,
with other barges attending upon him, he was conducted to the Court by the
Earl of Sussex and the Lord Norris, and most graciously received by the
Queen and her Nobles. Guards were appointed to attend upon him, and no
expense spared in doing honour to his embassy ; of the shows, pastimes, tilts,
and tournaments provided for his entertainment, accounts may be seen in other
books. It appertains more to the history we are writing, to notice the Feast of
St. George, which was holden at Windsor on the 18th of June, this year, for
the purpose of conferring the Order of the Garter on the Duke, who was on
that day installed a Knight, and he, and the Nobles his companions, most
royally feasted. Upon this occasion, the Ambassador was, in great form, accom-
panied from London by the Earls of Bedford, Leicester, and Essex, the Lords
Grey de Wilton, Sandys, BURGHLEY, and others ; receiving in gifts from her
Majesty, besides many pieces of plate, a Garter of gold with diamonds and
rubies, a George and diamonds, a Collar of gold, and another George less
ornamented ; — on the 28th the embassy returned to France, f
It was at this time, that in consideration of his great diligence and fidelity,
her Majesty conferred the Order of the Garter also on Lord Burghley himself; the
and him, being so noble and worthy a Princess as she is, and as he did publicly take the oath
according to the order in such cases, so did he, perchance that he did it from his heart, as the
thing that he would truly and justly observe and keep during his life, with such a show of con-
tentation as I have not seen the like."
* In Lord Burghley's Diary in Murdin this occurs under June 15.
t The French Court took occasion by this embassy to make another proposition of marriage to
. Elizabeth. The projected match with the King's next brother, the Due d'Anjou having failed,
Catherine de Medicis proposed her youngest son, the Due d' Alenfon as a proper match for the
Queen, which certainly in point of age he was not, being at the least 22 years younger than her
Majesty. Elizabeth took a month to consider of it, during which she kept all around her in theusual
state of uncertainty. In the mean while, Lord Burghley made many inquiries about him which
Walsingham answered. — See Digges, 218, 220. But in the month of August an interruption took
place in the harmony of the two Courts, which put aside for the time all thoughts of such an
union ; and possibly the Court of France was only making it a cover to its perfidious intentioni
towards the Protestants. Strype's Annals, ii. 218, and his Life of Smith, ch. xiii. But we shall see
this negotiation renewed : Riipin by mistake has said that the French Ambassador sought to bring on
again the marriage with the Due d'Anjou, but it was the Due d' Alenfon who was now proposed,
though he also became Due d'Anjou, on Henry's accession to the throne.
598 MEMOIRS OF LORD BU.RGHLEY. [1572.
Chancellorship of the Order, which he had formerly held, having been in April
bestowed on his great friend Sir Thomas Smith, who now also appears to have
obtained the vacant Secretaryship, though the precise date of his appointment is
rather obscure. — See Strype's Life of Smith, ch. xiii. In July following, as we
have before noted, Lord Burghley was farther advanced to be Lord High Treasurer.
in which post he continued till his death. This appointment brought with it, as
we are told by his Domestic, a new accession of cares and an additional load of
business ; in common justice to his Lordship we cannot refrain from copying
what this attached attendant says of him at this period, speaking of his appoint-
ment to be Lord Treasurer, he says, " which place he honoured, as much as the
place honoured him, therein exercising his wisdom and temper in so good sort,
as shewed his truth to his Sovereign, and careful administration of justice to her
subjects ; justice and peace kissing each other. He grew now to some greatness ;
carrying a reputation to bear such sway and rule in the commonwealth and
state, as it was thought nothing was done without him, and no wonder, for his
justice with his integrity, and temper with his justice so concurred, as well were
they satisfied who could bring their cause to his hearing to be tried before him.
He so equally hearing, justly censuring, and carefully dispatching causes, as few
suits were suffered to linger long before him, but were either ended by judg-
ment or ordered by agreement.
' His Lordship used one singular course in hearing causes; viz. that if he
found them difficult or deserving rigorously to be censured, he would ever make
motions for arbitrament, and either by his authority or persuasion agree them, so
as he ended more causes in a term, than were before ended in a twelvemonth ;
insomuch that all men had such an opinion of his justice and indifference,
as they never thought themselves satisfied, nor their suits well ended, that either
had not their cause brought to his hearing, or his letter in their behalf.
"Which drew upon him such a multitude of suits as was incredible, but to
us that saw it ; for besides all business in Council, or other weighty causes,
and such as were answered by word of mouth, there was not a day in a term
wherein he received not threescore, fourscore, or an hundred petitions, which
he commonly read at night, and gave every man answer the next morning, as
he went to the hall ; wherein one notable thing was observed of his excellent
memory, viz. that reading those bills over night, there was not one petitioner
came to him for answer of his petition the next morning, but, so soon as they
told but their names, or what countrymen they were, he would presently
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 599
remember it, tell them the matter, and give them his answer ; which was a
sign of a memorable memory, among so many other great causes, to hold in
mind so many other several suits.
" But, as his memory was excellent, his pains and industry were incessant,
and the one mutually assisting the other, brought him to that perfection. He
used also to answer the poorest soul by word of mouth, appointing times and
places of purpose so long as he was able.
" But after he grew impotent and weak, and could not go abroad, as his
nature was ever to do good, he neglected no means to perform it. For then
he devised a new way that others may imitate, viz. that being by age and
infirmities (we must anticipate here a little), forced to keep his chamber, and
sometimes his bed, he took order that poor suitors should send in their petitions
sealed up ; whereby the poorest man's bill came to him as soon as the richest.
" Upon every petition he caused his answer to be written on the back side,
and subscribed it with his own name ; or else they had his letter, or other
answer, as the cause required ; by which charitable and honourable device,
there was none staid for an answer, but was speedily dispatched, and as many
or more suits were answered, as when he went abroad.
" Thus held he on his course like himself, prayed for by the poor, honoured
of the rich, feared of the bad, and loved of the good ; to his Prince and
country loyal, and to the subjects most pleasing. For wondering at his
great wisdom and gravity, and praising his justice and integrity, most men
honoured him with the title of Father of the Commonwealth.
" Whereof they saw him as tender and careful as of his own child ; shewing
his care of the service of the state to be such, as I can truly witness he never
respected pleasure nor profit, wealth nor health, friends nor foes, nor any thing
private : neglecting and rejecting them all, when there was any service of his
Prince, or causes of his country to be followed or performed. Wherein his
labour and care was so incessant, and his study so great, as in cases of necessity,
he cared for neither meat, sleep, or rest, till his business was brought to some
end ; and when he was in never so great pain or sickly, if he could but be
carried abroad, he would go to dispatch business, though it were with never so
great pain or danger.
" His industry, in times of necessity, being thus very great, and his diligent
and studious course of life continually no less, caused all his friends to pity
him, and his very servants to admire him.
600 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
" And myself, as an eye-witness, can testify, that I never saw him half an hour
idle, in four and twenty years together.
" For if there were cause of business, he was occupied till that was done ;
which commonly was not long in hand.
" If he had no business (which was very seldom), he was reading or collecting.*
" If he rid abroad, he heard suitors ; when he came in, he dispatched them.f
" When he went to bed and slept not, he was either meditating or reading ;
and I have heard him say, he did penetrate further into the depths of causes,
and found out more resolution [of dubious points] in bis bed, than when he was
up. Indeed, he left himself scarce time for sleep, or meals, or leisure to go to
bed ; yet so long as his business went forward, and his Prince and country were
pleased, he thought his pains a pleasure, and all he could do too little — so great
was his care and love to his Prince and country."
, Those who are at all conversant with the contents of our national repositories
of manuscripts, and the incalculable amount of papers (letters, addresses, peti-
tions, &c. &c.) known, by his own indorsement and other particulars, to have
undoubtedly passed through the hands of Lord Burghley, most of them indeed
being immediately addressed to him; so far from regarding the above as any
exaggerated account of his immense labours, will rather, we think, be glad to
be supplied with it. as a piece of information almost necessary to account for the
* Among some papers obligingly put aside for ray inspection by Mr. Lemon, of the Stute Paper
Office, there is a large collection of pedigrees of the Kings of Judah, Israel, Macedonia, Egypt;
of the Kings of Assyria, Chaldea, Meiles and Persians ; of the Maccabees and Herodiun families,
all in Lord Burghley's own hand-writing, and marked by h\m,Culltcta ex Historiis sacr. trib. Regum
Jerusalem, &c. — a strong proof of the curious subjects to which he was accustomed to apply his
mind, in the very few hours of leisure he could ever command ; for even illness did not relieve
him from the burthen of public business, as might be proved in a thousand instances. Among
the very papers alluded to, there is an interesting letter to him from the celebrated Dr. Lawrence
Humfrey, of Oxford, which begins, " Et molestum mihi est flagitatorem videri, et gravi est
eadem de re scribere, ad occupatisiimum preesertim, maxime ad te Ccecili ornatissitne, quem in eo
gradu divina Providentia locavit, ut non modo ab intimis consiliis Reg. Majtlc". sed 4 secratis
omnium fere homuncionum esse videaris, &c. &c.," with much more to the same effect.
t " At night, when he put off his gown, he used to say, ' Lye there, Lord Treasurer;' and
bidding adieu to all state affairs, dispose himself to his quiet rest." — Fuller s Holy State, p. 27.
The same author supplies us with another anecdote. " The Queen reflected her favours highly
upon him ; counting him both her Treasurer and her principal Treasure. She would cause'him
always to sit in her presence, because troubled with the gout; and used to tell him, My Lord,
we make much of you, not for your bad legs, but for your good head." — P. ib.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 601
magnitude of such collections, mostly derived from the archives of the great
Lord Treasurer, being, as it were, the official remains of that celebrated servant
of the public, from his first appointment of Master of the Requests, under
Edward, to the end of his anxious and laborious career, towards the close of
the long reign of Elizabeth ; so that it has been well said, by the author of his
life, in the Biographia Britannica, " If we should particularly take notice of all
the great transactions in which he had the principal share, this article would
swell into a history."
But to return to the state of public affairs. It was on St. Bartholomew's day
this year, August 24, that the memorable slaughter of the French Protestants
took place, commonly known by the name of the massacre of Paris* A more
sanguinary and atrocious act it would be impossible to conceive, let the motives
alleged for its perpetration be what they might : we mean, whether they were
strictly of a religious nature, or as the French Court would have insisted,
political ; and to ward off or prevent projected treasons and conspiracies against
the Royal Family. -\ It would be beyond our purpose to go far into the details
of this horrible transaction, especially as there is no want of historians to consult
upon the occasion. Nothing could exceed the consternation it excited in
England, though the French Ambassador here was speedily instructed so to
explain matters, as to save, if possible, his master's honour, by pretending, as
had already been tried with Walsingham at Paris, that the Royal Family had
been in danger from the designs of the Protestants, and of the party attached to
the Admiral Coligtri, whose horrible and disgustingly cruel murder was the
forerunner of all the atrocities that followed.
Strype has introduced, from a French historian, the following account of
what passed in the metropolis : — " The palace clock struck ; then a noise was
heard about the streets of Paris that the Hugonots were in arms (they being in
* Not that the massacre was confined to the metropolis ; for as Walsingham wrote home, great
cruelties were committed at Lyons, Bourdeaux, and Orleans. — Other places might be added. See
Ellin's Original Letters, 2d Series, vol. iii. 23.
t Stri/jie's Annals, ii. b. i. ch. 17. so represented by Charles IX. and the Queen Mother to
Walsingham, and a few days after it happened. The English Minister was spared, and his house
suffered to be a sort of sanctuary to many persons : amongst those who took shelter there, was
the famous Sir Philip Sidney, who happened to be at Paris at the time, and in such favour
(possibly a treacherous attention) with Charles IX. as to have been appointed a Gentleman of his
Chamber. — See Quarterly Review, No. i. 81.
VOL. II. 4 H
602 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
their beds), and meant to kill the King, &c. The gentlemen, officers of the
chamber, governors, tutors, and household servants of the King of Navarre and
Prince of Conde, were driven out of their chambers where they slept in the
Louvre, and, being in the court, massacred in the King's presence. The like
was done to the lords and gentlemen that lay about the Admiral's lodgings ;
and then throughout the town, in such sort, that the number slain that Sunday
night, and the two days ensuing, within the city of Paris and the suburbs, was
esteemed to be about 10,000 persons; lords, gentlemen, pages, servants, and
of all sorts ; justices, scholars, lawyers, physicians, merchants, artificers, women,
maids, boys ; not sparing little children in their cradles, nor in their mother's
bellies."
The Admiral's head was carried and presented to the King and to the Queen
Mother, and then embalmed and sent to Rome, to the Pope, and the Cardinal
of Lorrain. The common people cut off his hands, &c. and drew his body
for the space of three days about the city, which done, it was borne to the
gibbet of Montfaucon, and there hanged by the feet.*
We are not willing to enlarge much upon this horrible event, but since it could
not fail to have a great influence on the general affairs of Europe, and as it has
been conjectured that Lord Burghley was meant to be included in the massacre,
it seems to belong to our subject, and we shall therefore add one more passage
selected by Strype, from the same French historian. " Let the reader consider
how strange and horrible a thing it was in a great town, to see at least 60,000
men with pistols, pikes, cutlasses, poniards, knives, and other such bloody
instruments, run, swearing and blaspheming the sacred majesty of God, through
the streets and into the houses; where most cruelly they massacred all whosoever
they met, without regard of estate, condition, sex, or age. The streets paved
with bodies cut and hewed to pieces ; the gates and entries of houses, palaces,
and public places, dyed with blood ; shoutings and hallooings of the murderers,
mixed with continual noises of pistols and calivers discharged ; the pitiful cries
and shrieks of those that were murdered ; slain bodies cast out at windows upon
the stones, drawn through the dirt, with strange noises and whistlings ; carts,
some carrying away the spoils, and others the dead bodies, which were thrown
• Among the sufferers most basely betrayed, and most cruelly used, was the celebrated Peter
Ramus (or la Rnmee), who had clone so much to shake the credit of Aristotle ; and who, after
being under the protection of the Cardinal of Lorrain, had turned Culvinist.— See Art. Ramut,
Diet. Historique, and Zouch's Life of Sir Philip Sidney, 43.
!572,] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 603
into the river of Seine, all now red with blood, which ran out of the town and
from the King's own palace."
Voltaire, who certainly meant to speak only of what he knew to be the truth,
in his Essay on the Civil Wars of France, states, after other historians, that
" Tavannes, Marcchal of France, an ignorant and superstitious soldier, who
joined the fury of religion to the rage of party, rode on horseback through Paris,
crying to his soldiers, Let blood, let blood ; bleeding is wholesome in the month
of August as well as in May."
We have an excellent account in Digges's Compleat Ambassador, of the first
intelligence received by the English Court of this shocking transaction, in a
minute to Sir Francis Walsingham, signed by Lord Burghley, Lord Leicester,
Sir Francis Knollys, Sir Thomas Smith, and Sir James Croft ; in which, while
great care is taken to preserve the subsisting amity between the two Courts, if
possible, by pretending to give credit to the French Ambassador's explanation of
matters, yet, it is added, that the same Ambassador had been informed that appear-
ances were, by many circumstances, as things stood, against the King ; that her
Majesty did greatly lament the deaths of those who had fallen, and that " if the
King shall not use his power to make some amends for so much blood so
horribly shed, God, who seeth the hearts of all, as well Princes as others, will
shew his justice in time and place, when his honour shall therein be glorified,
as the author of all justice, and the revenger of all blood-sheding of the
innocents."*
But the following private letter from Lord Burghley to Sir Francis, ten
days afterwards, more unreservedly expresses the sentiments of that great man
upon the sad occasion : —
" Sir, — I see the Devil is suffered, by the Almighty God, for our sins, to be
strong in following the persecution of Christ's members ; and therefore we are
not only vigilant of our own defence against such traiterous attempts as lately
* So far was this infatuated Monarch from making amends for the innocent blood shed in the
general massacre, that he had two Gentlemen executed, under a pretended conviction a.nd
acknowledgment of their having been privy to the alleged conspiracy against the King. They
made them, just before they were executed, sign two blank papers, which Charles caused to be
filled up afterwards, so as to imply that they knew of the pretended conspiracy. The King and
Queen Mother witnessed the execution, and caused others, against their will, to attend. — See
Strype, and the article Bi-iquemaitt et Cavagnes, in the Dictionnaire Historique. Even Henry of
Navarre is particularly mentioned as an unwilling spectator of the horrid sight.
604 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
have been put in use there in France, but also to call ourselves to repentance.
Of the Queen's Majesty's answer to this Ambassador, I have at good length
comprized the same in writing, which cometh now unto you signed by the
Council, which you shall use according as the time shall teach you. For
although the Ambassador hath seemed to gain so much credit with her Majesty,
as she thinketh the King is not guilty of the murders, otherwise than he
reporteth ; and further, that although the Ambassador saith that the King willed
him to assure her Majesty that the navy prepared by Strozzi, should not 'any
ways endamage her Majesty, we have great cause, in these times, to doubt all
fair speeches ; and, therefore, we do presently put all the sea-coasts in defence,
and mean to send the Queen's Majesty's navy to the sea with speed, and
so to continue, until we see further whereunto to trust. — I desire to have
knowledge of as many of the principals as were slain, and what Protestants
did escape."
Lord Leicester wrote less temperately, but his sincerity upon all points is so
questionable, that we cannot much trust to the indignation he expresses against
this or any other wicked deed : his words, however, are very strong, and his
resentment, upon such a cause as this, is not reasonably to be questioned.
" If that King be author and doer of this act, shame and confusion light upon
him, be he never so strong in the sight of men, the Lord hath not his power for
nought. If he continue in confirming the fact, and allowing the persons that
did it, then must he be a Prince to be detested of all honest men, whatsoever
religion they have; for as this fact was ugly, so was it inhuman, for whom
should a man trust, if not his Prince's word ? and these men whom he has put
to slaughter, not only had his word, but his writing, and not public, but private,
with open proclamations, and all other manner of declarations that could be
devised for their safety, which now being violated and broken, who can believe
or trust him?" He expresses his hope, however, that the Ambassador's expo-
sition of matters may prove true, and ends with requesting Sir Francis to be a
mean for procuring his nephew's (Philip Sidney) speedy find safe, return.
Sir Thomas Smith also* wrote in very mournful but indignant terms upon the
occasion, ending his letter with saying, " It grieveth no man in England so
much as me ; and indeed I have, in some respects, the greatest cause ;" meaning
probably in having been so duped by the French Court, and an instrument in
* See Strype's Life of Smith, and his Annals, ch. xviii. vol. ii.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 6Qo
concluding the treacherous peace so lately settled. He speaks of the events that
had taken place at Paris, as of treasons and cruelties more barbarous than ever
the Scythians used, and ironically adds, " I am most sorry for the King whom 1
love, whom I esteem the most worthy, the most faithful Prince of the world, the
most sincere monarch now living."
But the most curious letter upon the subject of all, perhaps, is the following
from Lord Burghley to Walsingham, dated from Reading, Steptember 25, 1572.
" Sir, — The last letters of yours by me received, were those which young
Mr. Hopton brought hither, since which time we have understood, by report
from Roan, that on Thursday was sennight there was a general slaughter made
at Roan of all that could be imagined Protestants, so as the very channels of the
street did run blood. We have heard diversely of Rachel, by some that it is
sacked by Strozzi, by some that it holdeth out, and that it is like so to do a
long time. As to the Ambassador's negotiation here with us, to seek to persuade
us that the King was forced, for safety of his own life, to cause the execution to
be done as it< was, and that thereof we shall see the proofs by the Admiral's
process, you may imagine how hard a thing it is for us to be so persuaded
against all our natural senses ; and how they will accord these two jars, we know
not. The King's letter first written after the Admiral's death, doth declare it to
be done by manner of sedition, and privately by the House of Guise, who feared
the Admiral and his would pursue against them the avenge for his hurt, and the
King's own guard about the Admiral was forced, and the King himself driven to
hold his guards about him in the Louvre for his own defence ; and now, yet it
must needs be notified, that the King did, for his own surety, cause the execution
to be done."*
Another curious contradiction might be pointed out. According to the
King's letter above, the blame is cast on the Guises ; and yet he was willing-
enough afterwards to take the honour to himself, in a medal struck at Paris, with
his own effigies on a throne, treading upon dead bodies, with this motto, Virtus
in rebelles ; and on the reverse, the arms of France, with these words, Pietas
excitavit Justitiam. 24 August!, 1572.
Both Courts, however, made a show of abiding by the terms of the late treaty,
but it was only show ;| for Charles undoubtedly was bent upon subduing the
Protestants if he could, and, indeed (in conjunction with those who had previ-
* Compleat Ambassador, p. 264. t See Rapin, viii. 473, 474.
606 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1672.
ously united in a league for the very purpose), Protestantism generally ; including
of course the Church of England in its turn.* As for Elizabeth, she was too
wise not to see this, and her Council felt themselves severally so grossly deceived
by the French King and Court, that it was impossible to advise her to act other-
wise than upon a general principle of distrust.
In the mean while the resentment of the treacherous dealings towards those
of the religion in France, was strongly manifested by the people of England ;
even the French Ambassador, when he next went to Court, had to pass through
a company all clad in mourning, and without receiving any of the customary
salutations. The Ambassador's (M. Salignae de la Motte Fenelon) own
account is very striking — at his first audience after the massacre, which took
place at Woodstock, " a gloomy sorrow," he wrote, " sat on every face. Silence,
as in the dead of night, reigned through all the chambers of the royal apart-
ments : the Ladies and Courtiers were ranged on each side, all clad in deep
mourning; and as I passed through, not one bestowed on me a civil look, or
made the least return to my salutes." This Ambassador, sensible of the national
disgrace, declared himself ashamed to bear the name of Frenchman, and when
commanded by Charles IX. to explain matters to Elizabeth, remonstrated, saying,
it would be to make himself an accomplice ; those who had advised it, should
be sent on such an errand. See Sewelfs Biographiana, cited by Zouch, in his
Life of Sir Philip Sidney ; and Compleat Ambassador, 247. And when, soon
after, the French King and his mother, were for renewing the negotiations for
a marriage between Elizabeth and the Due d' Alen^on, Walsingham did not fail
to represent to both, according to the instructions he had received from home,
that for the King to destroy and utterly root out of his realm all those of that
* Walsingham was so persuaded of this, that he urges the Queen, in his letters, to stand on
her guard, and unite herself with the Protestant German Princes ; and to beware of Mary,
and trust none of her fair speeches, having had so late experience of her faithless dealing. This
Minister seems to have been perfectly persuaded, after he had been brought to a sense of the
extreme duplicity and dissimulation of the French Court, that Elizabeth was in danger from all
quarters, and could have no hope of keeping the crown on her head, but by preparing for her
defence in every way possible.
Smith, wisely enough alluding to the rules of diplomacy, under the most suspicious circum-
stances, says, "YetPnncM, you know, are acquainted with nothing but douceur, so must be
handled with douceur;" alluding to the show of amity kept up: " not (he goes on) that they should
think the Queen's Majesty, and her Council, such fools, as we know not what is to be done ; and
yet that we should not appear so rude and barbarous, as to provoke where no profit is to any man/'
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 607
religion which she [Elizabeth] professed, and to desire her in marriage for his
brother at the same time, must needs seem to her at the first a thing very repug-
nant in itself; especially having before confirmed that liberty to them of that
religion, by an edict of his, perpetual and irrevocable. Catherine de Medicis
made strange proposals of meeting Elizabeth, upon the sea, to confer with her,
between Dover and Calais, but the latter declined it, declaring that the murder
of the Admiral, and general slaughter of the Protestants,* had moved such
doubts in her mind, that she knew not how to interpret of the offers of the mar-
riage or of the interview ; and when in October the proposal of an interview was
renewed, and the Isle of Jersey fixed upon, the Lord Burghley, by word of
mouth, told the French Ambassador, that it seemed to her Majesty to be so
strange, both for time and place, as that if the Ambassador had not shewed the
letters from the Queen there, f and the Queen Mother to that effect, she should
either not have believed it, or concluded that the Ambassador had mistaken the
same.J " Thus plainly," adds Strype, " did Elizabeth shew her disgust and
just jealousy of such invitations ; " indeed the jealousy excited by such proposals,
extended to the supposition that evil designs were in agitation against her
Majesty's person at this time, had she yielded to the request. \
* " In one interview Walsingham had with Catherine de Medicis, the latter seems to have been
admirably caught in her own trap. In order to abate Elizabeth's concern for the Admiral, she told
Walsingham of a paper which had been found, with his Testament, in which amongst other
advices, given to the King her son, one was, to keep the Queen of England and the King of
Spain as low as he could, as a thing that tended much to the safety and maintenance of his
crown. To which Walsingham answered, that howsoever he might be affected to the Queen his
mistress, he shewed himself therein a most true and faithful subject to the crown of France, and
that the Queen's Majesty made the more account of him, because she knew him to be so faith-
fully affected to the same." — Compkat Ambassador, 241.
t The Queen there , must mean Elizabeth, the consort of Charles IX. ; of this princess it is then
but justice to say, that she has the reputation of being a most amiable and virtuous woman, and
in no manner personally implicated in the atrocious transactions we have had to record; "La
funeste nuit de la St. Barthelemi 1' affligea extremement, elle n'en apprit, pas plutot lanouvelle a
son reveil, qu' elle se jctta toute baignee de pleurs aux pieds de son crucifix, pour demander a
Dieu misericorde d' une action si atroce, etqu'elle detestoit avec horreur."— See Diet. Historique
Elizabeth d' Autriche.
I See Lord Burghley 's letter to Walsingham, Compleat Ambassador, 316, where he treats these
proposals for an interview as a perfect mockery.
$ It was a common trick in these times to work upon the passions of the ignorant and super-
stitious, by casting figures of persons that should be destroyed, and dispersing prophetic intima-
608 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGIILEY. [1572.
Soon after this the Queen was solicited to stand godmother to the new-born
daughter of Charles the IXth, and to send over either Lord Leicester or Lord
BURGH LEY, to assist at the ceremony. " Perhaps," says Strype, " it was to catch
one of those chief counsellors of the Queen's." Elizabeth told Charles in her
answer, that " as she before had intention to have sent either one of them, or such
other as should have been as agreeable to the thing, so now there was to all the
world one great cause that she might not with honour, nor with law of nature,
send any whom she loved, to be in danger, as it seemed they might be, though
the King had never so good a meaning ; for by the death of so many, whom the
King did not avow, nor yet punished the murderers, what could strangers
expect ; especially when the King pretended, as by his own letters it appeared,
that it was the fury of the Catholics against those of the religion." " It is very
likely," Strype further observes, "that these prime counsellors of the Queen
were designed to be butchered, could they by this wile have got them there."
And indeed Camden is more explicit upon the subject, speaking of the marriage
of the King of Navarre and the Princess Margaret. " To this marriage," says he,
" were allured, by flattering promises and credulous hope of a perpetual peace
and renewing of love, but with notable dissimulation, the Queen of Navarre,
and all the choicest of the Protestants. There were also invited out of Eno--
O
land, under pretence of doing them honour, Leicester and Burgliley, and out of
Germany the Elector Palatines sons, that being thus brought into the net, both
they, and with them the Evangelical religion, might with one stroke, if not have
their throats cut, yet at least-wise receive a mortal wound." But to return to
the proposed sponsorship. Elizabeths answer was to this effect, that she
neither desired to christen the royal infant, nor would she send either of the,
Lords mentioned ; but that if the Queen (meaning, that is, Elizabeth d'Autriche,
the Queen Consort) should desire it, she would not refuse, and would send
some properly qualified person to represent her.
Towards the close of the year, however, a special Ambassador was dispatched
from the French Court, to propose, first, a continuance of amity, secondly, that
the Queen should be sponsor to the King's daughter, and thirdly, to pursue the
treaty of marriage with the Due d' Alencon. Before Elizabeth could be
persuaded to entertain this embassy in a friendly manner, Charles was again
tions of their speedy fall and destruction : the enemies of Queen Elizabeth were very busy in this
way, in the North especially, at this time.— See Strype's Life of Sir Thomas Smith; 127, Annah, ii.
ch. xx.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 609
reminded through his Minister, of his cruel proceedings against the Protestants,
and the odd appearance it must give to his present overtures in the eyes of
strangers ; nor did the Queen decline giving shelter to such as were compelled to
fly from France, though Charles called upon her to bid them depart her kingdom,
as rebels to his crown. She replied, that " she did not know or understand of
any rebellion they were privy to, and that it was the privilege of all realms to
receive such woful and miserable persons, as did flee to it only for defence of
their lives ." *
The name of the Ambassador sent upon this errand was, according to Strype,
Manvesire; Walsingham calls him Mansiere or Mannesiere, but Lord Burghley
in his Diary, Mason Flenr."\ The inattention to the spelling and writing of
names in those days is quite extraordinary.
But before we proceed further with the history of this renewed negotiation for
a marriage with the Due d'Alen^on, it may be proper to consider what was
passing in Scotland. The Earl of Lennox, the natural guardian of the young
King, being his grandfather, had been, as we have before shewn, advanced to
the regency, not many months after the death or murder of Murray, on the 17th
of July, in the year 1570 ; but, in the month of September, 1571, the new Regent
was also slainj in a tumult, the particulars of which being amply related
* Among those who came to England, in consequence of this horrible massacre, was John de
Ferriers, Vidame of Chartres, a learned and worthy nobleman, Strype calls him ; he had had a
very narrow escape, the Duke of Guise having actually followed him home to his house to murder
him, but he was able to conceal himself, and then applied for the King's safe-guard, which was
readily granted, upon a hope that he would be induced by it to return to his house, and there meet
his fate ; but he made use of the safe-guard to steal away to England, where he arrived on the
7th of September, and immediately wrote to the Lord Treasurer, to admonish him to arouse
the Queen to a sense of her danger, and to excite her warmly to resent what had come to
pass, and not be too lenient with the Papists, believing that they would become more gentle by
a few light words ; for that he was assured, that they would rather become more and more insolent,
if they were more easily dealt with. The letter is to be seen in the Appendix to Strype's Life of
Archbishop Parker, No.lxx. The beginning has something curious in it, " Liberate mihi ex car-
nificina Parisiensi et elapso e manibus Gimuqui primum ad domum usque meam est insectatus, et
postea insidiis omnis generis mihi, tetendit, &c."
t Nov. 1572, " Mason Fleur came to Hampton Court from the Duke of Alanson."
I He was slain by the orders of Lord Claud Hamilton, in revenge of the death of his rela-
tive, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, who had been executed by the Regent's order not many
months before.— See McCrie's Life of Kno,T,\\. 197. Madlle. de Keralio observes, that the person
who struck the fatal blow, " prononsa le nom de 1'archeveque, et lui fit, sentir que oette mort
VOL. II. 4 I
610 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
in other histories, we have not dwelt upon ; and the Earl of Mar, who had
exerted himself vigorously to defeat the plan of the Queen's friends on the
late occasion, and thereby strongly recommended himself to the other party, was
speedily chosen to succeed Lennox. The disturbed state of the kingdom, how-
ever, for which he has the credit of having felt most deeply, and his perfect
inability to heal the wounds which others are supposed to have been interested
in keeping open, had such an effect on his mind as to sink him into a deep me-
lancholy, of which he soon died ; " a martyr," as a celebrated writer calls him,
" to his situation and sensibilities."* Upon the death of this amiable, but
irresolute Nobleman, the Earl of Morton was chosen to succeed him [Nov. 24,
1572], a more able, but by no means so honourable or popular a man as his pre-
decessor. But before we proceed to notice what passed under the new govern-
ment, we must observe, that on the very day that Morton became Regent, the
Kirk of Scotland lost its celebrated founder; or, at least, its firmest and most
strenuous supporter, Knor, in the 67th year of his age. The Regent (Morton)
attended his funeral, and pronounced at his grave these memorable words :
' There lies He, who never feared the face of man." Like many other public
characters of those days, this eminent reformer has had the fate to be spoken
of by different writers, in very opposite terms. He has met with an able biogra-
pher in our own days, Dr. McCrie, to whom we must refer the reader, for such
an account as is eminently calculated to do justice to the reformer, and rescue
him as well from the mistakes of Protestants, as from the reproaches of Papists.
A foreign writer, who felt some displeasure at the severity of his censures from
the pulpit, gives him the credit of having " immortalized himself by his courage
against Popery, and his firmness against the tyranny of Mary." — Against the
latter, it is well known, that he took a most decided part, to the impeachment of
his loyalty, his humanity, and his courtesy. Dr. McCrie of course has examined
all these charges, and plainly shewn, how necessary it is to go deeply into the
history of the public transactions of those times, to be able duly to appreciate
the part taken by certain eminent individuals engaged in them, and to judge
correctly of the construction that ought to be put on many passages of their
lives, obnoxious to the parties to whom, by inevitable circumstances, they were
avoit au moins autorise les represailles si elle ne les justifioit pas entitlement aux yeux de la
raison," Such severe reprisals were what Elizabeth and her Protestant Counsellors had con-
stantly to dread, and we may add, to guard against.
* Stuart's History of Scotland.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 611
generally opposed. One passage from this important work we must have
leave to extract. " But the greatest torrents of abuse poured upon his (Knox's)
character, have proceeded from those literary champions who have come forward
to avenge the wrongs, and vindicate the innocence of the peerless and immacu-
late Mary Queen of Scots. Having conjured up in their imagination the image
of an ideal goddess, they have sacrificed, to the object of their adoration, all
the characters which, in that age, were most estimable for learning, patriotism,
integrity, and religion, as if the quarrel which they had espoused had exempted
them from the ordinary rules of controversial warfare, and conferred on them the
absolute and indefeasible privilege of calumniating and defaming at pleasure ;
they have pronounced every person who spoke, wrote, or act,ed against that
Queen, to be a hypocrite or a villain." In the raving style of these writers,
Knox was, " a fanatical incendiary, a holy savage, the son of violence and bar-
barism, the religious sachem of religious Mohawks." — [Whitaker's Vindication
of Queen Mary, passim.] The same writer [Whitaker] speaks of Buchanan as
" a serpent — a daring calumniator — leviathan of slander — the second of all
human forgers, and the first of all human slanderers." Dr. Robertson he calls,
" a disciple of the old school of slander — a liar — and one for whom bedlam is
no bedlam." After these citations, we need scarcely apprise the reader, that
among the objects of Whitaker's gross scurrility, none fare worse than Elizabeth
and her great Minister. We are obliged to Dr. McCrie, therefore, for saving
us the trouble of entering into particulars. As to Knov, we should wish to
refer, not only to the work of his excellent biographer, but to the sanction
given to his opinions and representation of Scottish affairs at this period, by
the Edinburgh Reviewers, July 1812, No. xxxix.
The first object of Morton, on obtaining the Regency, seems to have been
to divide the Queen's party; and it is asserted, that he was specially directed
by the English Council, through the ministry of Killegrciv, to take advantage
of what had passed in France, and to excite a terror amongst his countrymen
of a similar massacre, if the French influence should be suffered to continue
in its former force. But, indeed, the Scotch must have been extremely
supine, and indifferent to the visible course of things, if they had not been
appalled by what was going forward on the Continent, and if the Protestants,
at the least, had not collected from those proceedings, a forewarning of their
own fate, if Popery were allowed to extend its ravages. They must have
known, that whatever pretences had been set up by the French King to the
612 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
contrary, the massacres in that country had been entirely directed against the
Protestants; and they might have known, in one month only at the most,
after Morton's elevation, that Pope Gregory XIII., had caused a jubilee to be
proclaimed (to be observed on the 7th day of December), among other reasons,
for the happy success of the Most Christian King against the heretics; and which
in the bull itself,* (to be seen in the Appendix to Strype's Life of Arch-
bishop Parker, No. Ixviii.) was made to take the lead of all the other causes,
which were these: for the victory of the Christians against the Turk (under
the Spaniards particularly, and John of Austria, whose banner, as one wrote,
floated with an inscription of — " Extermination to the Protestant faith") ;
for the conservation of Flanders (under the tyrannical rule of the Duke of
Alvd) ; and for the election of the Due d'Anjou to be King of Poland (contrary
to the wishes of a large party there, known to be horror-struck with the French
cruelties). For all these causes, every one of which was evidently connected
with the triumphs of the Catholics, the jubilee of Pope Gregory had been pro-
claimed throughout Europe, particularly " praying God," as the bull ran, " to
give grace and virtue to the Most Christian King, Charles IX., to pursue the
salutary and blessed enterprise he had undertaken, of purging his realm from all
heresies, and bringing back and restoring the Catholic Church to its integrity
and ancient splendour."! This, surely, was speaking out sufficiently to
awaken the Protestants to a sense of their danger, and when coupled with
what was known to have been agreed on in the treaty of Bayonne, as well as
( Translated into the French language, the more directly, as it has been observed, lo quiet the
minds of the disturbed subjects of Charles IX. ; it was found by Strype among Lord Burghley's
papers: and another writing, in Latin, purporting to be " Scriptum cujusdam Sanguinarii Pon-
tificii, acceptutn in Octobri anno 1572, a quodam niagni nominis Viro," — and endorsed by Lord
Burghley himself, " Scriptum missum in Germania contra Protestantes." The paper may be seen
in the same Appendix, No. Ixix, and is well worth reading.
In the Pope's bull (1569), which Camden has transcribed, Elizabeth is styled the Pretended
Queen of England, and the Wuman who had seized upon that kingdom.
f " Is it possible," says the author of the Life of Sir Philip Sidney," to imagine that a pane-
gyrist should be found to celebrate this deed of treachery and relentless cruelty; alas! such a
panegyrist did really appear in the person of M. Antunius Mmetus, the pupil of Scaliger, and one
of the most learned and elegant writers of his time. In an oration, illuminated with all the
splendour of Ciceronian eloquence, and delivered at Rome in the presence of Pope Gregory XIII.,
he congratulated his Holiness on this dishonourable victory over the heretics." One passage,
indeed, of this remarkable oration, is worth copying, " Qua quidem nocte (for it all passed by
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 613
the decrees of the Council of Trent,* the Protestants of all countries. And it
seems, indeed, that without any particular guidance or direction, much more
any undue influence, the Scots had sense enough to be " awakened by the
beacons in France (as Sir Thomas Smith wrote to Walsingham), to provide
for their own safety, and to become suspicious of their Gallic neighbours."*
And these fears and apprehensions had the effect of disposing many of the
Queen's friends to unite with those of the existing government, and to fall into
agreement with them, as to the wisdom and prudence of submitting to the rule
of a Protestant king ; so that the two parties in Scotland, in consequence of
what had happened in France, began naturally to incline more to each other,
or to express it, in the very words of Strype, " to draw nearer and nearer to an
accord, to which the cruelty in France helped not a little." It was therefore
apparently unnecessary for Killegrew to be very earnest with the Regent to
encourage and keep up a terror of such doings ; and, indeed, Dr. Stuart him-
self acknowledges, that the massacre was immediately interpreted to be a
natural consequence of the confederacy which had been formed at Bayonne,
for the extermination of the reformed. It is, nevertheless, pretended to this day,
we are sorry to say, that the accounts of the French massacre were artfully
exaggerated, to keep alive the apprehensions of a Popish conspiracy, and " give
additional weight to the arguments of Burleigh, and the other enemies of the
Queen of Scots." — Lingard.
We are the more particular in this, because there is nothing, perhaps, so dif-
ficult to account for in the History of the Life and Administration of Lord
Burghley, as the secret instructions given to Killegrew, upon his embassy to
night), Stellas equidem luxisse solito nitidius arbitror, et flumen sequanam majores undas
volvisse, quo citius impurorum horainum cadavera evolveret et exoneraret in mare." This is
really dreadful, considering besides, that for fear the Seine should not drown all that were
driven into it, Charles IX. sat at his palace window to fire upon those of his unhappy subjects
who were on their passage to the river.
* " The bloody decrees," as they were called in the preamble to the Acts of the Assembly in
Scotland.
f See the Articles of the Ministry, Barons, and Commissioners of the reformed Kirk in
Scotland, Oct. 20, 1572, Strype's Annals, ii. 267. But before this, on the 14th of September,
Walsingham had written to Sir Thomas Smith, from Paris, " The Lord Levingston and divers
other Scottish gentlemen who see here no way to enjoy the liberty of their conscience, do desire
passport, wherein I mean to use less difficulty than heretofore I have done ; for that they seem
upon the last accident, to desire most perfect amity between the two crowns of England and
614 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
Scotland, in the course of this year, and which happen to be still extant in the hand-
writing of Lord Burghley; it is impossible, we think, to read them without some
feelings of disgust and horror. We cannot, with any honesty, turn aside from
them. " In opere suscepto," says the honest Thuanus, " nisi officio deesse vellem
aeque mihi flagitiosum silentium, quam mendacium ipsum vitandum." We would
willingly adopt another sentiment of the same writer to be found in his celebrated
letters to Camden in defence of Murray; " De csetero nigrum, in candldum in cu-
jusquam gratiam convertere neque animus ab initio fuit neque mine esse debuit."
Accustomed to look back to Elizabeth and her very able counsellors, as, in a
high degree, the authors of England's glory, greatness, freedom, and indepen-
dence, long before we engaged in the present work, the candid reader, we hope,
will allow for our anxiety to rescue, if possible, such reputed benefactors to the
country in which we live, from the heavy, gross, and unqualified censures of a
set of writers notoriously partial ;. and that, in a cause, where, without their
assistance, all the best feelings and principles of human nature, might be
expected at once to take a decided part. The candid reader, we hope, will be
prepared to give us credit for the pain we must have felt, to find that the fame of
Lord Burghley was so deeply implicated in this very melancholy story; but that he
was not sensible himself (however much appearances may now seem against him)
of being actuated by any positively malignant principle, as some would infer, we
ought in common justice to believe, from the warm resentment he is known to
have expressed in his lifetime, of precisely such an accusation, in the case of the
Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk. " God amend his spirit, and confound
his malice" said he of the author of a libel against himself and the Lord Keeper,
published in this very year in France ; " and for my part, if I have any such mali-
cious or malignant spirit, God presently so confound my body to ashes, and my
Scotland, in respect of the common cause of religion. I suppose, passing by that way, and
receiving good entertainment at her Majesty's hands, they will rather do good than harm at
home, by making them in the country understand what had passed here, and the danger that is
like to follow, without perfect union between the said crowns."— Compl. Ambast. 244. See on
the Articles of the Kirk of Scotland, Mcdie's Life of Knox, ii. 216, &c. Knox being yet living,
was not sparing of the perpetrators of the bloody deed ; from the pulpit at Edinburgh, he thun-
dered the vengeance of heaven against that cruel murderer and false traitor, the King of France,
and desired Le Croc, the French Ambassador, to tell his master, " that sentence was pronounced
ag-ainst him in Scotland, and that the divine vengeance would never depart from him, nor from his
house, if repentance did not ensue." The Ambassador applied to the Regent to have him
silenced, but it was refused.
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 615
soul to perpetual torments in hell." [Cornpl. Ambassad. 317.] Nothing surely
but a deep sense of injury, and resentment of unjust accusations, could have
drawn from him such extraordinary and indignant expressions, especially if we
consider that it has been asserted by one who had been much in the way to mark
his even temper, that " in thirty years together, he was seldom known to be
angry." [Life by a Domestic.'] It may not be amiss to add, what Lord Burghley
further expressed, both of himself and his near relative, the Lord Keeper : " God
send this estate no worse-meaning servants, than we two have been, who indeed
spared not labour nor care to serve our Queen and country ; and if we had not,
we may truly avow, neither our Queen nor country had enjoyed that common
repose that it has done." [Compl. Amb. 317. See also the postscript to the above
letter.] It may be observed that of this libel, Camden says, " it was intended to
bring them into hatred with the Prince and the people, who by their wisdoms
and diligent care had prevented, or broken their designs and wicked hopes."
The Queen was exceedingly offended, and issued a proclamation, declaring the
charges against the two great Counsellors, to be mere slanders.
It may be seen that by the secret instructions * to which we are referring,
Killegrew had two most important commissions intrusted to him. The first was,
to apprise some of the "principal persons of either party of the late horrible,
universal murder, in France, and thereupon to move them to have good regard to
that state, that the like be not there attempted." As this might touch the Queen's
party, it has been judged by those who have taken that side of the question, that
this was a plain contradiction of the avowed purposes of Killcgreivs mission,
which were, to agree and conciliate the two parties; whereas this they say, had a
tendency to foment the differences, by setting the Protestant or King's party
more than ever against the Queen's Catholic friends, and her French connexions;
but in truth, if the French massacre were likely to work upon the minds of the
Queen's party, and dispose them, more than had been looked for, to unite with
those who sided with the King and the Protestants, Killegreivs avowed and
secret instructions might be brought to agree in the main, that is, by operating-
upon the fears of the party heretofore connected with the French, he might bring-
the whole kingdom into a more promising state of accord, and fulfil, to the
utmost of the terms, the ostensible object of his commission, which was, to agree
and reconcile the two contending parties, concluding that the Catholics them-
* They are printed in Murdin.
616 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
selves, might now be disposed to turn from the French ; and indeed there seems
to have been a great chance of this, the Queen's party having become much
weakened after the death of the Duke of Norfolk, and reasonable hopes
being entertained, that if those who kept the Castle of Edinburgh, could be
brought over, the whole kingdom might in a short time be made to submit to
the King's authority. The party in the Castle, however, were so buoyed up with
the hopes and expectations of succours from abroad, prepared, if not to rescue
Mary, to convey her son out of the kingdom, that they only sought to tempo-
rise in their negotiations, and drive off matters till the succours they expected,
particularly from the Duke of Alva, should arrive.
But the other commission intrusted to Killegrew, by the secret instructions with
which he was supplied, must appear to equal, we are sorry to say, some of the
worst proceedings in France; in fact, it was to promote, if he could, a requisition
from the Government in Scotland, to procure Mary to be delivered up, for the
express purpose of being there tried and executed.'
Accustomed as we were, in common with the rest of the world, before we
undertook to write the Life of Lord Burghley, to sicken at the accounts given of
Elizabeth's persecution of the Scottish Queen, we should have supposed it
impossible to get over such a document as this, with any qualification of the
horrible mandate, but from a more perfect acquaintance with the exact circum-
stances of the times, we shall venture to advance something in explanation, at
least, even of this horrid proposal. We do not hesitate to say, we have bestowed
the utmost consideration upon the case, and shall now therefore present the
reader with the result of our investigation.
The Secret Instructions, which may be seen in Murdin, p. 224, are dated
September 10, 1572, seventeen days only after the massacre of St. Bartholomew ;
and not so many, of course, after the reception of the intelligence of that horrible
catastrophe by the English Court. Killegrew was to be dismissed to Scotland,
to see what could be done upon this emergency, which seemed evidently to
threaten the whole Protestant interests,* and must therefore have appeared to
* Lord Burghley professed to some of his friends, that he was " at his wits end ;" and his friend,
the Archbishop, gave way to the most dismal apprehensions upon hearing it. He wrote to the
Lord Treasurer upon it, though not very intelligibly, as his letters are transcribed by Strype; but
thus much is evident, that the Queen appears not to have been so much alarmed as her friends
wished her to be ; not so suspicious of the Papists' designs as was consistent with her own safety.
This led the Archbishop to express himself to the Treasurer, then on progress with the Queen, in
MEMOIRS OF LORD BURHGLEY. (j]7
the English Council, rather favourable than otherwise to the King's cause in
that divided country. But to the internal peace and quiet of both kingdoms,
Mary was still a dreadful obstacle. She was the direct rival and competitor of
Elizabeth, in the eyes of all the Catholics of Europe. She was, it is true, in
custody, but a very unsafe custody; there was no knowing how soon she might
be rescued, and there was no doubting as to the issue of such a rescue.* She
could only be delivered by those who were the inveterate enemies of Elizabeth,
and of the established government of the realm, in church and state. Four
months only had elapsed since Elizabeth had dismissed her Parliament, with an
implied rejection of their proposals to bring Mary to trial, as the chief security
to herself, her person, and her crown. As long ago as in the year 1568, Mary
had been denounced by her own Scottish subjects as deserving of death ; and
preceding Regents, as the instructions set forth, had asked to have her delivered
up by the English Court, to be proceeded against by the way of justice.
Repeated insinuations had been pressed upon the Government at home, that the
removal of Mary was an indispensable step to the peace and tranquillity of
England ; that, in short, the life of Mary was the death of Elizabeth,! and that
i
the following terms : " I pray God ye bring borne the Queen's Majesty well, and yourself with her.
They [the Papists] be full of spite and secret malice;" and alluding to Mary, " If that only desperate
person were away, as by justice soon it might be, the Queen's Majesty's good subjects would be
in better hopes, and the Papists' daily expectations vanquished." Sandys, Bishop of London, wrote
in much the same strain to the Lord Treasurer, accounting the Scotch Queen the chief cause of
all danger.
* It would be perhaps difficult to say who was most careful at this time about Mary's safe
keeping. It appears from some letters in Lodge, from the Lords Shrewsbury, Burghley, and
Leicester, that complaints were made, towards the close of this year, of her not being so straitly
kept as the times required. Lord Shrewsbury was complained of because he occasionally absented
himself from Sheffield Castle to take the air.— See Lodge, vol. ii. letter Ixxv. From this charge
Lord Burghley defended him, so that it appears there were others more watchful upon this point
than himself. Leicester wrote to caution Lord Shrewsbury, about the same time. " Nevertheless,"
says he, " I perceive you have need to look well about you, for there is [are] many eyes upon
you." Letter Ixxvi. — He speaks in this letter of Queen Elizabeth's consideration for Mary, and
seeks to explain some things, of which Mary had complained, in a letter addressed by that Queen
to himself and Lord Burghley. — See letter from Lord Burghley on the same, No. Ixxvii.
f How much soever this expression may be scoffed at and vilified by Mary's apologists, we
consider it as-containing a great deal of truth ; as expressing the views of the two great parties
into which Europe was divided at that time. Dr. Stuart speaks thus contemptuously of the
English alarms : — "-The I'rotestants were every where transported with rage against the Papists.
Elizabeth prepared herself against an attack from the Roman Catholic powers ; and was haunted
with the notion that they meant to invade her kingdom, and to give it to the Queen of Scots. Her
VOL. II. 4 K
618 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
>
any concordance or community of interests, with regard to those eminent and
illustrious p2rsonages, was as little to be looked for, as the union of fire and
water, or any other opposites in nature ; and, in the mean while, to cite the
very words of Killegrew's secret instructions, " It began to be found daily,
more and more, that the continuance of the Q. of Scots in England was so
dangerous, both for the person of the Queens Majesty, and for her state, and
realm, as nothing presently could be more necessary, than that the realm might
be delivered of her, and though by justice [as the late Parliament had decided],
this might be done in this realm, yet, for certain respects, it seemed better that
she should be delivered into Scotland."*
The proposal seems certainly very horrible, but we must remember that it
was only a proposal. Killegrew was to see if things could be brought to such
an issue in Scotland — a plain proof that some repugnance existed to the bringing
them to that issue in England ; nor should we omit to look at the alternative.
Ambassador at Paris, Sir Francis Walsingham, augmented her apprehensions and terror: he
compared her weakness with the strength of her enemies, and assured her, that if they should
possess themselves of Scotland, she wouid soon cease to be Queen." It was his duty to tell her
so if he thought so, and for our ovn part, we thoroughly believe lie told the truth. Elizabeth
was not a woman to be haunted with ram fears and idle apprehensions ; and as for beino- trans-
ported with rage against the Papists, generally, she was at this very time suspected of being a
Papi-t herself, by the Puritans, for her lenity towards the former, and particularly for not bringing
Mary at once to trial. Of the evil designs against her, who can possibly doubt, when such evidence
is to be Produced as the testimony of the contemporary biographers of Pius V., Catena and Gabutius,
the former of whom positively asserts it to have been the design of Pius: " De socorre la reina
de Scotia, e libenir la — de rtstituir hi rellgione in Inghillerre — c di In-are a vn tempo la sentina di
tanti mali Elizabetu ;" or in the words of Gabutins, some taken from the Pope's own mouth,
" Lapsam in Anglia religionem renovare, simul et illa'ii malonim omnium sentinam [Eliz™.], seu
ut appellabiit ipsc, fl-.i-j;itiorum servam, de media tullere." Speaking also of the commission given
to llidolpho (Ridolri), Catena affirms that lie was charged, " movesse gli aniini ab sollevcimenlo
per distruttione d'Elizabatta : " Gabutius, " Incolarum animas ad Elizabethan perditionem rebellione
facta, commovere." How much more in the secret were the actual servants and officers of the
Papal See, than Mary's advocates of the eighteenth century !
* In a conference Sir Thomas Smith, who was certainly by nature no blood-thirsty man, had
with Charles IX., when treating for peace between the two countries, the King having proposed to
have the Queen of Scots included in the treaty, being his kinswoman. " And so," said Sir
Thomas, " she is to my mistress; but if she were your daughter, or your son, if he or she would
procure your death, or to have your crown from you, would you not see justice done on him or
her that should attempt it, rather than to be still in danger?" Killegrew was present at this very
conference, and then made the observation in the text, that fire and water might as well be
expected to subsist together, as the English and Scottish Queens.
!572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 019
If no such demand, with its consequences, could be brought about, what was
then to be done ? Why, in truth, Mary was to continue still to live in England,
at the expense, and to the continuance of danger to Elizabeth ; and things termi-
nated in this very alternative. Mary was not demanded by the Scottish autho-
rities, to be disposed of in the way of justice, and the consequence was, not that
she was brought to justice and summary punishment in England, but suffered to
live, and continue in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the first of
the Nobility of the realm,
We do believe, indeed we cannot attempt to deny, that if she had, at that time,
been demanded by the Scottish authorities, she would have been delivered up,
and probably lost her life. It is very melancholy to have such points to concede
in the life of a man, pronounced upon various other occasions to be " mild/'
" merciful," of " a liberal, benign, and kind disposition ;" and yet so the case
really is.* Lord Burghley himself, seems undoubtedly to have penned these
secret instructions, but upon no other motive, we shall venture to- add, than an
invincible persuasion at the time,f that the safety of one Queen was incompatible
with the life of the other ; a case indeed decided but a few months before by
the Parliament, and very much confirmed by the testimony of those who were
most in the way of judging of the temper wd disposition of the Catholic states
of Europe, Mary's great friends and abettors; and exactly in the same proportion,
the bitter enemies of Elizabeth and her Ministers. We, who write of these things
almost three centuries afterwards, must be expected, on the score of feeling, to
* The character given by several writers to Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Sandys, is, that he
was mild and benevolent, and yet no man could be more convinced than he appears to have been
at this time, that the chief remedy to be sought was, " Furthwith to cutte off the Scottish
Queues heade : Ipsa est nostrifundi calamitas."—Sce his letter to Lord Burghley, Sept. 5, 1572,
in the 2d Series of Ellis's Original Letters, No. cxcii. Mr. Turner's remarks on the state of
things at this time, in Book ii. chap. xxx. of his Reign of Queen Elizabeth, are certainly very
much to the purpose.
t In a letter written from Woodstock by Lord Burghley to Lord Shrewsbury, dated
September 7, not more than a fortnight after the massacre, and only three days before the
penning of the instructions to Killegrew, he writes, " These French tragedies, and ending of
unlucky marriage with blood and vile murders, cannot be expressed with tongue to declare the
cruelties. These fires may be doubted that their flames may come both hither and into Scotland ;
for such cruelties have large scope. God save our gracious Queen, who now assembleth her
Council, that may consult what is to be done for some surety. We have sent Killegrew this day
into Scotland. — All men now cry out of yonr prisoner;" viz, the Queen of Scots. The instructions
therefore which are dated on the I Oth, were probably the result of the Council's meeting, and
sent after Killegrew. — See Lodge, ii. 75.
620 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
sympathize with Mary; but we can scarcely, injustice, expect the same of those
who had to defend Elizabeth, her person, her crown, and her Protestant Church,
from machinations the most destructive in design, intrigues the most subtle and
pernicious, and an opposition which could brook no competition of interests.
Mary ultimately fell a sacrifice to the politics of the times ; but it was after
a long delay and procrastination of the fatal stroke.* Had things taken the
opposite turn, even in the course of the year of which we are writing, we are
entirely persuaded that Elizabeth, and her chief Counsellors, would have been
brought to a much more speedy and ignominious end : in truth, they only very
narrowly escaped such a catastrophe, as we have had occasion to shew.
We have repeatedly observed, that dangers averted afford every opportunity
to those from whom they were expected to arise, to deny the existence of them ;
and a general inclination to lessen the credit of all the dangers to which Eliza-
beth is said to have been exposed at this period, is to be traced through the
whole of the writings of the advocates of Mary. Such is the inveterate malice
or hatred with which they speak of all the acts of Elizabeth and her Ministers,
that we are scarcely expected to believe that Elizabeth had any real enemies,
or that her Ministers had any reason to distrust the fair speeches with which
they were continually entertained by foreign Courts, and their Ministers ; as well
as by Mary and her commissioners ; and perhaps never more than in the course
of this year. The great question of Mary's guilt or innocence at the time of
her dethronement, had been for some while suffered to sleep, but in this " year
On the 8th of September, Lord Lekesttr also wrote to the Earl, from the same place, and in
his letter has these words, alluding to the destruction of the Protestants : — " God defend our
Mistress from the hidden practices laid for her among these open facts committed so nearly to
touch her ; for she is the fountain and well-spring of the griefs that procureth this malice, and
though others smart, yet she is the mark they shoot at; and so must she think, and accordingly
must she provide, or else all will be nought."— See also Strypes Annuls, ii. 243-4. Mr. Lodge,
in his Illustrations of History, has added a note to the above letter, which, with many others of
his notes.^ might, we think, have been well spared. An editor of such valuable originals, would
have done well to have left them, in all instances, to speak for themselves.
Dr. Gilbert Stuart says, Elizabeth was always looking forward with anxiety to the period
when she might throw aside all reserve, without danger, and conduct this unfortunate prisoner to
the scaffold. This we are far from believing.— Eighteen years, to say the least, was a long time
to wait for such an opportunity, especially while Elizabeth's danger from the detention of Mary
was constantly increasing. Mary seemed, for many years, to be moving all Europe to dispatch
Elizabeth, and yet lived in personal security herself all the while, though in the power of such
an inveterate and blood-thirsty enemy (if Marys advocates are to be believed}, as no female ever
had before.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 621
of much action," as Strype calls it, it began to be revived, and as is generally
the case, where opposites are insisted upon, it seems difficult to say, which party
digressed farthest from the absolute truth. — We allude now to two publications
which made a great noise about this time, " The Defence of Queen Mary's
Honour," by Bishop Lesley (Leslie), and the " Detectio Maria" by Buchanan ;
and in regard to both of which some unworthy deceptions appear to have been
practised ; the first it seems had been printed with great secresy and without any
name* or license, in London, in the year 1569. — In the year 1571 the book was
reprinted at Leige, under the name of Morgan Phillipes, Batchelor of Divinity,
as a new work, and some copies being sent over with Charles Bailly, a Fleming,
one of Queen Mary's servants, they were seized at Dover and suppressed. It
seems to be admitted that the work bears the marks of party ', but is otherwise
argumentative and eloquent.f Vv'e may suppose that by the " marks of party,''
is meant an overstrained defence of Mary's honour. It is held to be " remarkable,"
by the author just cited, -" that no answer was made to it by any of the partizans
of Elizabeth, or by the adherents of Murray or Morton;" but, in fact, an answer
seems to have been ready made in the " Detectio Marice " of Buchanan, if a
writing previously in existence can be called an answer ; for we are disposed to
think that under whatever circumstances the Detection was brought forward at
this time, it was probably the same as the Book of Articles exhibited before the
Privy Council in 1568, J purporting to be " a collection of the presumptions
and circumstances from which it should appear, that as the Earl Bothwell was
the chief murderer of the King, so was the Queen a deviser and maintainer
thereoff. " The charges which the Book of Articles contained against Mary were
probably known to Leslie, and his Defence in all likelihood was adapted
and designed to break the force of them, but in the truth of those charges
others were deeply interested ; if Mary were guile innocent, and her honour
admitted of a full defence, the conduct of those who had either in her own
country or this, put a restraint upon her liberty, must have been atrocious in the
extreme; we cannot deny it; we would not be thought willing to deny it. The
time has been, when we were as ready as any of our readers can be, to follow
Mary with sorrow and concern into the fastnesses of Lochleven, deplore her
sufferings, detest her persecutors, and rejoice at her deliverance by the chivalrous
efforts of the younger Douglas ; but the sobriety of real history requires that we
* Or rather under a fictitious or assumed name, Eusebius Dicaeophile.
t Gilbert Stuart. f See Laing's Dissertation on the Murder of Darnley, 161, 169.
(522 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
should pause, and examine things more narrowly, before we consent to scatter
indiscriminate blame, on all who had to take a contrary part, there having been
more at stake perhaps in this particular struggle, than in any other which history
records. Leslie's Defence is allowed to have borne " marks of party ; " the
party opposed to him must therefore have felt touched by it, and if they detected
untruths in it,* must have been expected to suppress it, or to use endeavours to
* We have the testimony of Lord Burghley himself to its containing one "notable lye ; " viz.,
that "all the Noblemen that heard Queen Mary's cause did judge her innocent." — See Cabala,
174. More generally of the book itself he says (in a letter addressed to Sir Henry Norris), " Of
late the Bishop of Ross caused one of his servants secretly to procure the printing of a book in
English, whereof, before eight leaves could be finished, intelligence was had ; which book tendeth
to set forth to the world, that the Queen of Scots was not guilty of her husband's death, a
parable [quaere, Paradox ?] in many men's opinions ; next that she is a lawful heir to the crown,
and herewith such reasons inserted as make unsound conclusions for the Queen's Majesty's present
state." — Ibid. We have in this last clause sufficient reason for suppressing the book, whatever
might be said in it of Mary's honour or dishonour : but what a strange defender of Mary's honour
must Leslie have been, after the acknowledgment made to Dr. Wylson, to be seen in Murdin. On
the 8th of November, 1571, Leslie wrote to Mary from the Tower, informing her, that as all
her letters to the Duke of Norfolk, as well as his own, had be n discovered, and the proceedings
with the Pope. Spain, the Duke of Aha, &c. fully become known to Elizabeth and her Ministers, it
was in ram for him, on examination, to attempt to deny any thing; so that he had confessed all.
This letter is very curious, but what is more curious, on the very same day, Dr. Wylson, after a
conference in the Tower with Leslie, wrote to Lord Burghley, as follows : " The Bishop seemeth
to me to be very glad that these practices are come to light, saying they are all naught ; and he
hopelh that when folk will cease to be lewd, his Mistress shall speed the butter. He saith farther,
upon speech that I had with him, that the Queen his Mistress is not fit fur any husband ; for first,
he saith, she poisoned her husband, the French King, as he has credibly understood; again, she
hath consented to the murder of her late husband the Earl of Damlej' ; thirdly, she matched
with the murderer and brought him to the field to be murdered ; and last of all, she pretended
marriage with the Duke, with whom, as he thinketh, she would not long have kept faith, and the
Duke should not have had the best days with her. Lord, what people are these, what a Queen
and what an ambassador.' — Murdin, 57, from the original. — In fact, it may be added, the
pretended marriage with Norfolk was not the " last of all," for she was, by her own account,
before the Duke's execution, encouraging the Spaniard to think she would marry John of Austria,
but still promising to keep faith with Norfolk. It is singular enough, but eight days only after the
above letter of Dr. Wylson to Lord Burghley, the Bishop wrote himself to his Loidship, in a
letter addressed to the Right Honourable, my very good Lord, my Lord Burghley, and beginning,
" I am sorry of your Lordship's present disease, and would to God I were as good a physician to
cure your Lordship, as you may, and I trust shall be, for my present relief, for then your Lordship
should not be long in pain." — In another letter, Murdin, p. 60, he speaks of Lord Burghley's
" Truth and honest part keeped to all men, as commonly reported, and of which he himself had
had experience."
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 623
counteract the impressions it was calculated to make. Both these things seem to
have taken place ; the copies that fell into the hands of Government were sup-
pressed, but as many remained to circulate among the enemies or friends of
Elizabeth abroad, what less could be done by those who really judged Mary to be
guilty, and therefore the cause in a great degree of her own sufferings and re-
straint, than to put forth such proof of her misdoings as might at least undeceive
those who were in the way to be misled by the party statements of Bishop
Leslie. All these things we conceive to have fallen quite within the course of
what might naturally have been expected, and can therefore understand, while
we lament, the measures to which Lord Burghley himself seems to have had
recourse, to disgrace * Mary in the eyes of foreigners, or in other words, for so
we think his own terms should be interpreted, to shew the grounds upon which
she had been removed from the exercise of her authority by her own subjects,
as the true causes of her misfortunes. It should be remembered that, in the eyes
"This term was, we must confess, so used by Lord Burghley or the Queen, in the Instructions
sent to the English Minister in France, as to afford the advocates of Mary a very fair handle for
assuming that she was to be disgraced at any hazard of violating the truth ; but it should be re-
membered, that she had been sufficiently disgraced already, by the loud and popular charges
against her, as having at the least married the murderer of her husband; nay -those who had
some character to keep up in the world, such as Sir Ralph Sadler, for instance, if not the Duke
of Norfolk himself, had c;illed her a murderess and adulteress, believing her to be so from the
evidences produced, but it may be said to remain to this day an undecided question, which was
most honest or most din/ionest, Leslie or Buchanan. If the latter were honest, Leslie's contrary
statements deserved to be suppressed, as far as they could be ; and where they could not, it would
seem natural, that Buchanan's eo«Hto-statements should be made known. That Lord Burghley,
who has been so exceedingly ill spoken of, for his care to publish and disperse abroad the
Detectio Maria;, had yetsorne feeling for Mary, would appearfrom the following remarkable passage
in a letter from Bishop Leslie himself, the author of the Defence of Mary's Honour, to her servant,
Charles Bailly, then in custody for having brought the Defence into England. Speaking of his
appearance before the Council, the Bishop writes, " J' ay reqeu trois de vos lettres, par lesquelles,
j'ay entendu vos responses aux demandes de my Lord Burley, lesquelles sont fort bien a propos.
Je vous prie n'ayez point de peur, pource qu'ils ne peuvent faire aucuue dishonneur ni dommage
a vostre personne, et quant aux menaces de my Lord Burley, il ne sont que parolles ; et combieti
qu' il parle rmlement, ueaiimoins il sera trouve le meilleur ami pour vostre liberte. Et en cas que
vous lui trouvez seul, dictes lui hardiment en secret, qae la Royned' Escossc est vostre maitresse ;
se fyant en lui et pour 1' amour d'elle vous lui peuvez vous aider estre raise en liberte. Car il
m'a promis se traveller pour vous."- Murdin, 6 ; see also p. 9. Mad"0, de Keralio, one of the
most impassioned defenders of Mary, though on most other occasions an admirer of Elizabeth,
admits, that this plot was so adroitly'managed, and secretly and deceitfully carried on, as to have
nearly baffled the vigilance, and escaped the detection of CECIL.
024 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
of many of his contemporaries, Buchanan passed for a faithful historian, nor is
his credit universally shaken to this day ; * the strong testimony of Thuanus, in
defiance of Camden, and even of his royal co-adjutor, James I., will ever remain
as a remarkable vindication of Buchanan's veracity, and may reasonably dispose
us to believe, that after all, he might not be wrong in his. accusations of Mary.
And if she were guilty, why were others to suffer from any false assertions
of her innocence? and suffer besides to such an extent, as Elizabeth and her
Ministers were likely to do, from any wrong impressions made upon the
minds of foreigners ?
It is not to be wondered that in this distressing struggle, every body's eye
should be fixed upon Mary ; she was ultimately the greatest sufferer, and she
suffered in such a manner, as to obliterate, if not to atone for, all her previous
transgressions ; but the consummation of her sufferings came on step by step,
and it is step by step that we must investigate its causes. We do in our own
minds thoroughly believe, that Mary was disgraced before she took refuge in
England ; that Darnley's death, and her marriage with Bothwell ruined her
character, and, considering her foreign connexions, rendered her unfit to rule in
Scotland in so remarkable a crisis of affairs in Church and State ; a crisis, as
much affecting England as Scotland on the ground of religion. But as much
as Mary is the leading and prominent object of modern inquiries, Elizabeth
must have been the leading and prominent object in the eyes of Europe, at the
period of which we are writing. Daughter of the first English Sovereign who
had thrown off the yoke of Rome—Sister of the first purely Protestant Sovereign
of England — Successor of a restorer of the Catholic faith, after a temporary,
interruption, and bent upon again shaking off the authority of the Pope, it is
impossible to suppose that she could be less than a marked object of Catholic
jealousy and suspicion ; and Mary's unfortunate connexion with the crown of
England through Henry VII., could not fail to point her out (especially
considering the capricious proceedings of Henry VIII. with regard to the
succession), as a marked competitor of Elizabeth, \fany advantages could at any
time be obtained against the latter. Henry II. of France, had given sufficient
* See article Buchanan in Bayles Dictionary, and in the Eiographia Britannica. If the suppres-
sion of Leslie's Vindication is to be regarded, as some pretend, as a strong proof of its containing
unwelcome truths (see before) ; Buchanan's History had a like confirmation bestowed upon it by
the Scottish Parliament, in 1584, " to the greater diffusion of the author's reputation," which are
the very words of Dr. Stuart, vol. ii. 194.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 625
intimation of the sense entertained abroad of Mary's superior claim to the
English crown, and nothing but the high spirit of Elizabeth, and the extraor-
dinary vigilance of her Ministers, could possibly, we may venture to say, have
defeated the projects formed for the transfer of the crown to Mary, from the
very period of Elizabeth's accession. However often, and however earnestly,
Mary might afterwards seem to disclaim all pretensions during the life of
Elizabeth, it was impossible not to perceive, that her foreign connexions had
never abandoned her claims, and that in fact, the downfal of Elizabeth and the
elevation of Mary to the English throne, were constantly in the view of the
Papists, whether in Scotland or at Rome; in Spain, France, Flanders, or Germany.*
To defend Elizabeth therefore from such a combination of foreign interests,
and such a competitor close at hand, was the leading object, we may be sure,
of her principal Ministers, and we cannot wonder that they should have been
prone to take advantage of every incident likely to incline the balance on her
side. Mary's irregularities in Scotland had this effect, by leading to her depo-
sition by the Parliament there, and the consequences were such as might have
been expected, considering that she had a son in whose name, as her immediate
heir, the government might be carried on; for had Murray ascended the throne
in his own name, there would have been so manifest an usurpation, as greatly
to have altered the case. But with this, in fact, we have no more to do than to
shew, that whenever attempts were made to assert Mary's perfect innocence, it
altered the whole character of the proceedings against her in her own country,
before she came into England, and of course had the effect of imputing to
Elizabeth and her Council such wanton barbarities as were never before heard
of ; such barbarities in short as are still imputed to them by Mary's apologists,
and which ought to be contradicted, as they were contradicted at the time, by
any counter-statements that may be produceable. The Detectio Maria, pro-
ceeding from the pen of Buchanan, had certainly a harshness in it, as directed
against a known benefactress, that will always bear hard upon the reputation of
that learned man ; but it was defensive as regarded Murray, and many others ;
and if it contained truths, as opposed to notorious falsehoods, its evidence is not
to be despised, much less overlooked, as connected with the transactions of the
year 1572, in which the Papists were all looking for their " golden day" (as they
called the restoration of their religion in England, and Elizabeth's deprivation),
• See Strype's Annals, ii. 263, 264.— We must again refer to Mr. Turner's recent history for
a fuller account of the grand Papal conspiracy against England, after Catena and Gabutius.
VOL. II. 4 L
626 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
and when they were busy in all parts ; in Spain, and France, and Rome, by secret
councils and intrigues (which scarcely the vigilance of Walsingham could
detect), all intended for the deliverance of Mary and overthrow of Elizabeth ;
and in England itself by prophesy ings, conjurations, and hidden treasons, of
which the Government was continually receiving information, not from any
suspicious authority, but from the loyal and faithful amongst the Queen's
subjects,, who had their eyes upon what was passing around them, and guessed
from what they saw, that every preparation was going forward for a formidable
rebellion. In August, indeed, the execution of the Earl of Northumberland,
for the part he took in the rebellion of 1 569, seemed greatly to increase the
malice of the Papists,* and the number of the Queen of Scots' friends, as
Walsingham was able to discover, through a Popish spy at Paris, who had been
in England, and had reported to the French King and the Duke of Guise, that
some practice was in hand for that Queen's deliverance, whose party was nearly
strong enough to encounter any forces Elizabeth could oppose to them.
The Lord Treasurer was by no means exempt this busy year, from his usual
cares and 'troubles relating to the Church ; and indeed it is very extraordinary,
considering the great pressure of other business, that he should have been able or
inclined to pay the attention to such matters as appears to have been the case ;
but his connexion with Cambridge rather forced them upon him. This indeed
was the year when the Admonition to Parliament appeared ; in which the
Puritans or Disciplinarians seemed to put forth their whole strength,! to unsettle
the established order and government of the Church, as savouring too much of
Popery, and not carrying the Reformation far enough.J We have already
* Sanders had said, Northumberland buffered martyrdom at York. Upon which Mr. Turner
has lately made the following remark : " A Nobleman wilfully rebelling, and heading an army
against the Sovereign, and suffering the legal penalty, was therefore a martyr in the estimation of
a Romish priest!"
t Cartwright has the credit of being the chief author of it, though others probably joined.
J " Non dissimulo, quin argumentis e scriptura,et externarum ecclesiarum exemplo aclductus,
aliquid abesse putem, quo ecclesia nostra, nuper e tenebris vindicata, proprius ad splendorem
llpuTOTvxov xapaKTripoc; possit accedere." — Chark's Sermon at Cambridge ad Clerum. Chark being
censured by the University for this discourse, appealed to Lord Burghley, who at first thinking
him hardly used, endeavoured to get him restored to favour, but finding him obstinate and
extremely bent against the calling of Archbishops, Bishops, &c. he left him to take his chance.
Browning, another Novelist, having (at this time) made his submissions upon a like censure,
obtained the Chancellor's full intercession to have him restored. These Novelists in their enmity
to the establishment, were accustomed to call the Reformation of the Church of England, a
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY.
expressed our opinions upon this point, and endeavoured to shew, that as a
question relating only to what might be harmlessly retained, upon the separation
from the Church of Rome, it was a mere matter of opinion, and one which
should rather have been accommodated by reasonable concessions and submis-
sion, than brought into such angry debate as turned out to be the case. We are
not disposed to deny the learning or abilities of some who were engaged against
the establishment in this contest; but we conceive that their learning and
abilities, whatever encouragement they might receive from certain persons about
the Court, were ill applied, and mischievously exerted in fomenting quarrels,* of
which the Papists were at hand to take advantage, and which brought disgrace
on Protestantism generally, or on the principles of the Reformation; sober men
•wished it not to be carried too far, to the entire alienation of such Papists as
might otherwise be easily reconciled to the establishment. Certain however
it is, that the Disciplinarians pursued their designs and purposes, with an
unyielding perseverance, approaching to obstinacy and defiance of the existing
authorities, and gave great trouble thereby to the worthy Archbishop Parker,
and others well affected to the established order of things ;f but chiefly to the
deformed Reformation. Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop, was the person on whom the task of
answering the Admonition chiefly fell ; being urged thereto, and assisted in it by Archbishop
Parker. — See Strype's Life of Whitgift, b. i. ch. vi. vii. As soon as his book was printed, he sent
a copy to the Lord Treasurer, with a long letter, the substance of which may be seen in Strype's
Life of Archbishop Parker, b. iv. ch. xii.
* This should be constantly borne in mind, in what we say of the Puritans ; however learned
many of them might be (as was the case certainly with Cartwright), however pious or con-
scientious, they were quarrelling with what was established by law, and acting in defiance of the
law, quite as much as the Papists ; claiming to have the use of the national churches, exclusively
upon their own terms ; terms as rigid as any adopted by their opponents; as unfriendly to true
liberty of conscience, and free inquiry ; for, according to Cartwright's own Directory of Church
Government, those to be admitted to their ministry were to be strictly examined, as to their life
and conversation, freedom from all contagion of heresy, soundness of faith, and consent in all things
to the doctrine received by the Church, including discipline of course, for in doctrine they pro-
fessed to agree with the establishment.
t See for instances of this, the attack upon Bishop Cooper in Strype's Annals, vol. ii. b. i.
ch. xxi; his Life of Archbishop Parker, Whitgift, &c. &c. In the chapter referred to above,
relative to Bishop Cooper, the author thus concludes: " I have transcribed this long paper" (the
answer to the Bishop's sermon), " that hence might be seen the spirit of this sort of men in these
times, rude in Language to their superiors, dogmatical, confident in their charges of Popery,
persecution, and antichristianism upon this Church and the reformed governors of it, and extolling
their new discipline,"
628 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572,
Lord Treasurer, whom Strype calls, upon this very occasion, alluding to his
connexion with the University of Cambridge, the " kind Chancellor," and " the
wise and good Lord Treasurer ;" and indeed he seems to have exhibited all
these virtues, in the patient hearing he gave to all parties, and the pains he took
to reconcile matters, as far as it could be done, without too great sacrifices on
the part of the establishment. In the addresses presented to him by both
parties, a great confidence was professed in his " singular benevolence," " his
regard to justice," his " wisdom," " goodness," exemplary " moderation," and
" sound judgment."
But from one quarter he appears to have received an address of a very
different nature ; we mean from Dering, of whom we have spoken before : a
man of family and education, and from whom, therefore, better things might
have been expected ; but he certainly seems to have written very intemperately
to the Chancellor, with this good effect, however, that it provoked an answer.
" Somewhat stirring," as Strype in his 'usual way expresses it, " the mild and
good nature of that most pious and wise Nobleman, as appears in a letter to him
[Dering] dated April 3, wherein is seen as well this Lord's modest and Christian
deportment, in justifying himself against Dering, as Dering's principles and
lofty spirit."*
As this excellent letter (for so it certainly is} may be seen in the Appendix
to the second vol. of Strype's Annals, No. xx. we shall not attempt to transcribe
it ; but shall merely observe, that it was replied to by Dering, in a Latin letter,
" so full of stiffness," says Strype, " and so abounding in his own conceit, that
we cannot but gather from it a character of that man's temper and spirit." — This
letter also may be seen in Strype's Appendix, No. xxi.
But amidst all these disputes and complaints, the Lord Treasurer's attention
to whatever changes, or reformation of things, might be really, as he thought,
and essentially requisite, was unremitted, and even during the Queen's summer
progress (whom he almost constantly attended), he drew up certain memorials
" of things necessary to be better ordered," the heads of which only, it may be
sufficient to notice, as more may be seen in Strype. |
" The state of the Church and Religion.
" The obstinate Contemners of religion.
" The ministers of the Law to be reformed.
* Dering had in fact no few friends at the Council-board, as Collier has observed, (ii. 538.)
and Lord Leicester among the number. f See also Collier, ii. 538.
157-2.] .MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 629
" The houses of Court and Chancery to be visited.
" The councils in the Marches of Wales and in the North to be considered.
" The Commissions of the Peace to be viewed and examined.
" Good and faithful men to be made Sheriffs.
" The Navy of the realm to be surveyed.
" The statute against rogues to be executed."
As all these things are still to be seen in Lord Burghley's own hand-writing,
we have no need to press upon the attention of our readers, such signal proofs
of his great and incessant care of all things appertaining to the good of the
nation. They may be left still to speak for themselves.
The same noble Lord and good patriot, exerted all his abilities this year and
the following, to relieve the Queen's subjects from certain most vexatious pro-
cesses in regard to concealed lands, forfeitures, &c., which had heretofore
exposed them to the extortions and vexatious visits of graceless and wicked
men ; termed by Lord Coke, in resentment of their unfeeling practices,
" harpies" nodi " helluones," " turbidum hom'mum genus." The articles drawn
up by Lord Burghley, that " great and useful Counsellor," for these purposes,
are also to be seen in Strype's Annals, ii. b. i. ch. xxii. They were only six in
number, but eminently calculated to check the extortions and mal -practices of
the griping Commissioners, who had hitherto been engaged in such inquiries.
The Lord Treasurer was also about this time the author of a bill of great im-
portance to the Bishops and Clergy of the realm, by making the lands, tenements,
goods, and chattels of tellers, receivers, under-collectors, &c., liable to the pay-
ment of their debts, and to prevent fraudulent deeds, gifts, grants, alienations, &c.
This arose out of a case which had occurred in the diocese of Norwich, whereby
Parkhurst the bishop, had like to have been a great sufferer. Having intrusted
a person with the collection of his tenths to be paid into the Exchequer, the
receiver converted the money to his own uses, bought lands with it, and then
fraudulently conveyed those lands away to defeat the Bishop of all remedy.
The Bishop was of course served with an Exchequer writ to make good the
deficiencies, greatly to his distress and embarrassment; but, as the case is fully
stated in Strype's Annals and other books, we need say no more of it here,
except that it will be found to tell greatly to the praise of Lord Burghley, as
well as of his friend the worthy Archbishop, who interested himself much in
the business.
Speaking of the Archbishop, we may observe, that it was in the course of this
year, that his new edition of the Holy Bible, commonly called the Bishops
630 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. [1572.
Bible, came forth ; it was so called, as we may conclude, from the circumstances
of the Bishops being chiefly concerned in the preparation of it ; it was adorned
with maps, arms, and portraits; the arms of Lord Burghley appearing in the
map of Canaan, prefixed to the book of Genesis, and before the book of Psalms,
where is also a portrait of him, in his gown and furs, and holding in his left
hand a Hebrew psalter open, with his motto con UNUM ET VIA UNA on the
chapiters of the pillars between which he stands. A full account of this valuable
publication, the second large Church Bible in the English language, may be
seen in Strype's Life of the Archbishop, b. iv. ch. xx. One of the persons
employed by the Archbishop, to compare the translation with the original, was
Laurence ; " a man in those times," says Strype, " of great fame for his know-
ledge of the Greek language, and who read Greek to the Lady Cecil, afterwards
Baroness Burghley, the Treasurer's Lady, of whom the said Laurence testified,
that she equalled, if not overmatched, any of the same profession in that
language." — Laurence's notes of errors in the translation may be seen in the
Appendix to Parker's Life, No. Ixxxv.
We must here take leave to introduce a long passage from Strype's Life of
Archbishop Parker, so immediately relating to Lord Burghley and the town of
Stamford, as not reasonably to be omitted.
" The latter end of this year several families of Protestant exiles, and natives
for the most part of the Low Countries, were about transporting themselves out
of London to Stamford in Lincolnshire, there to live and follow their callings ;
and this by the motion of Lord Burghley, to whom the town chiefly belonged,
well knowing what good profit and benefit might redound unto the place and
country, by the trades and business these men should bring along with them,
by taking off the wools at a good price, and encouraging the sowing of flax and
hemp, improving land and such like ; for they were for the most part weavers of
such sorts of cloths as were not yet wove and made (or very rarely) in England,
as bays, and says, and stammets, fustians, carpets, linsey woolseys, fringes,
tapestry, silks, and velvets, figured and unfigured linen : there were also among
them dyers, rope-makers, hatters, makers of coffers, knives, locks, workers in steel
and copper, and the like, after the fashion of Nurenburg in Germany. For the
bringing this motion to perfection, hbrand Balkius their minister, and Casper
Vosbcrgius, in the name of the rest, put up their petition to Lord Burghley,*
• This petition, addressed " Illustri ac generoso Domino D. a Burghley Mcecenat i obsenandissimo,"
may be seen in the Appendix to Strype's Parker, No. Ixxii. with the articles, ten in number,
following it, No. Ixxiii.
1572.] MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. 631
whom they called their Maecenas, to obtain certain liberties and privileges from
the Queen, to settle themselves and their families at Stamford ; to have a church
to worship God in, in their own way, without disturbance ; to have a liberty to
set up their trades, and to buy and sell, and to plant also and sow, and follow
husbandry for their necessary subsistence, to make shoes, and garments, and
hose, and to bake, brew, and exercise the occupations of carpenters, joiners, &c.
for and among themselves — and to appoint seven men to settle any controversies
and disputes that might arise."
We need only add that the establishment of this Congregation and Manu-
facture took place as proposed, under the auspices of Lord Burghley, and
continued a great while at Stamford.
It remains only to give an account of the Queen's progresses this year. — Lord
Burghley being a constant attendant, and having besides often to receive her
Majesty at his own seat in Hertfordshire.
It was in the month of July that the Queen began her summer progress, 1572.
and she appears to have passed first into Essex, to Havering Bower, belonging
to her Lord High Chamberlain, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who not many
months afterwards, was married, as we have already related, to Anne, daughter
of Lord Burghley.
From Havering Bower she appears to have gone for three days to Theobalds,
the seat of Lord Burghley, whose short memorandum of what was esteemed so
great an honour, deserves to be copied. "July 22, 1572, the Queen's Majesty
was at Theobalds." — This however was comparatively but a very short visit to
that celebrated place ; as we shall see hereafter. From Theobalds she went to
Gorhambury the seat of the Lord Keeper Bacon, brother-in-law to the Lord
Treasurer, and from thence to Dunstable and Woburn, the seat of the Earl of
Bedford. On the 12th of August her Majesty was at Warwick, being met on
her way thither by the members of the Corporation, and addressed while in her
carriage, by the Recorder in a long speech, after the fashion of the times ; to be
seen in Nichols.* The Lady of Warwick being in the coach with her Majesty,
and many Lords and Ladies in attendance, particularly the Lord Burghley, High
Treasurer, the Earls of Sussex, Oxford, Rutland, Huntingdon, Warwick and
Leicester, Lord Howard of Effingham, and divers other Lords, Ladies, Bishops,
* The account given in -this speech of the town, and Earls, of Warwick, is very curious. A
copy of verses presented by the Preacher of Warwick, was so composed, as to produce, from the
initial and final letters, the following words, Tu Elisabeta viro nubis, o mater eris. — A strange
conceit, but applicable to the wishes of a great part of her Majesty's subjects.
632 MEMOIRS OF LORD BURGHLEY. \\512.
and Gentlemen.— From Warwick she went to Kenilworth, leaving her household
and train behind ; and stayed there from Wednesday morning till Saturday night,
when she returned to Warwick; at Kenilworth she is said to have been enter-
tained with many princely sports, and on the Monday following she returned
there again ;* passing her time between Kenilworth and Warwick, till the 26th
of August, when she went forward to Lord Compton's, at Compton in the
county of Warwick ; from Lord Compton's her Majesty went to Berkeley Castle
[Lord Berkeley's], and thence to her own palace at Woodstock ; where she appears
to have received the account of the massacre at Paris. From Woodstock she
went to Reading, and thence to Windsor, where her progress terminated on the
22d day of September, in which month she fell ill of the small-pox, but quickly
recovered from it. Her Christmas the Queen kept at Hampton Court, from
whence the Secretary, Sir Thomas Smith, wrote to a friend, " If ye would know
what we do here, we play at tables, dance, and keep Christmas;" which Strype,
in his Life of Sir Thomas, conceives to have been a secret lash at the Court, for
their carelessness at such a dangerous time.
* Nichols's account, taken from the Black Book of Warwick, lias a curious incident in it of some
Court Scandal, communicated on the road to the Lord Treasurer, but the particulars of which do
not appear.
END OF VOL. II.
Printed by J. F. DOVE, St. John's Square.
DA Nares, Edward
Memoirs of the life
and administration of the
v'2 Right Honourable William
Cecil
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